Intro I’ve got recently a tablet from HP: ElitePad 900 which is a very nice piece of engineering: it is slick, powerful, well-made and it seems to be the best tablet I ever kept in my hands. Symptoms However, once I configured HP Support tool to install automatically HP Updates I’ve noticed two important problems: [...]
Archive of posts filed under the compulsive thoughts category.
aplay -l shows different card ids after reboot in Debian Squeeze GNOME
If you experience sound problems in Debian Squeeze (GNOME) this article should help you: http://www.shcherbyna.com/?p=1800. However, sometime it happens that the card id you put into .asoundrc might be changed next time you boot your machine. I’ve noticed that after a few reboots the aplay -l command shows that my card is assigned a new [...]
Bye-bye Windows, Hello Linux
First time ever in my life, I removed a licensed and activated Windows from my desktop computer and installed Linux instead. My 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate was getting slower and slower with time, and I decided to try something new, stable and preferably free. Before I always had a dual boot between Windows and Linux [...]
Setting environmental variables in Mac OS (OSX) for Ida Pro
As a user of Ida Pro I recently bumped into a case when my Ida Pro could not connect to a license server because it was in another sub-network. So each time I was trying to open some file Ida was telling me: License server error: Unable to checkout: LM-X Error: (Internal: 443 Feature: IDAPROFM) [...]
Web filtering went wrong for BitDefender Endpoint Security
I recently bumped into an interesting case when dealing with a web page blocked by BitDefender antivirus. If page is unsafe or blocked by system administrator, your browser will show a page like this: As shown on the screenshot, the page being blocked is a Ukrainian version of Google search: https://www.google.com.ua. Since I am not [...]
Debian Wheezy Beta 1 : white (corrupted) screen with square mouse pointer on ATI Radeon HD 3600 XT (ChipID = 0×9598)
As I was having problems with installation of Wheezy I could not sleep well and miss the opportunity to test the new Debian release If you recall, here is what I got after installation of Wheezy on my machine: This problem actually happened to me under GNOME and KDE and is resolved by installing firmware-linux-nonfree [...]
Debian Wheeze expirience or why FreeBSD looks more interesting compared to Debian
I’ve been using Debian Squeeze (6.x) at home for a while and in general it was quite good not counting a few bugs with kernel, flash, sound and kde. Recently I saw that development in Wheezy (7.x) has frozen and I decided to upgrade … Here is the result of my upgrade: Well, I was [...]
Mac OS X vs Windows kernel development: from hell to paradise (Part # 2)
This post is a continuation of the compulsive thoughts about OSX vs Windows kernel development started here: Part # 1 So, it’s being a while since I was writing about OSX. My project has grown up a little and it’s time to release a first alpha. The kernel extention (kext) behaves as a socket level [...]
Asus P5QL PRO: no post, fans spin, switch off / switch on
I have this bizarre bug with my Asus P5QL-PRO motherboard: each time I go to sleep in OS, and the sleep is interrupted by power off event, on the next start the motherboard does the following: 1. Screen is off 2. No post signal 3. Fans continue to spin 4. Machine starts, then stops, then [...]
Asus P5QL Pro & Noctua NH-14 cooler
I’ve been recently playing with my oldish Asus P5QL Pro box trying to cool down CPU because the stock Intel cooler was already almost dead. I got idle temperature like 45 C or above. So, I decided to go for a Noctua NH-14 cooler which seems to be pretty effective when reading reviews, etc, etc. [...]
Configuring gtalk in pidgin in Debian 6 Squeeze x64 GNOME for Google Apps account
If you are going to use Google Apps account in pidgin you have to use a few tricks to make things working: In Basic tab: 1. Change Domain from gmail.com to yourdomain.com In Advanced tab: 2. Remove check “Require SSL/TLS” and set “Force old (port 5223) SSL 3. Change “Connect port” to 443 4. Change [...]
Configuring ICQ in pidgin in Debian 6 Squeeze x64 GNOME
I’ve always had problems configuring ICQ account in my pidgin in Debian. Somehow it never worked although I tried all these different combinations like “Use clientlogin” or “Use SSL”, etc, etc, etc. It never worked out of the box like it happens with Kopete in Debian KDE. At some point I thought it was a [...]
ABM handlebar conversion kit for Honda CBR 600 F4i (FSport) 2001
Just got handlebar conversion kit for my Honda CBR F4i from ABM. The kit basically looks like this: It contains the following items: 1. Top yoke 2. Longer brake lines for front brakes 3. Longer clutch cable 4. Handlebar & handlebar ends 5. Longer wires for lights, etc 6. Dot 5.1 brake fluid 7. Some [...]
alsa and no sound in Debian Squeeze x64 GNOME
I started to use Gnome recently under my Debian Squeeze and I noticed that I have no sound in flash (youtube) as well as in vlc. Well, it seems like I need to configure my .asoundrc with the proper card id. Here is a nice command which allows you to enum your devices: $ aplay [...]
Smart Auto Replier reborn
I hate throwing away good things. Lately I was doing backup of my hard drive and I noticed a bunch of code I wrote in 2004 known as Smart Auto Replier plugin for Miranda. To my surprise it was quite big amount of code and it was pity to let it just fade away. Given [...]
GPLing oldish code
Back in 2004 I did a small plugin for Miranda IM messenger which was providing auto replying facility. I uploaded it to Miranda database and since that time it had ~ 40 000 of downloads. Some people were inspired with it and based on it some other plugins: Simple Auto Replier Recently I came across [...]
KMail: “Signing failed: Bad passphrase” message in Debian 6 Squeeze KDE
I was recently trying to setup automatic signing of messages in KMail and I hit a problem : each time I am sending something, I got the message “Signing failed: Bad passphrase” without any opportunity to enter passphrase for my private key. It looks like this: It seems like you have to specify proper path [...]
Changing background color of iGoogle or Google pages?
I noticed that since the beginning Google is not allowing to change background colour of it’s pages. It is pity, as if you take for example DuckDuckGo you are able to modify the background color easialy: DuckDuckGo Settings page. Moreover, you can easily specify to use always HTTPS, which is not yet the case for [...]
Happy New Year!
Time is passing very fast, and the new, 2012 Year has just arrived. I wish you all the best in 2012: achievements of your goals, good health, and a very, very positive attitude to life! A+
Mac OS X vs Windows kernel development
I always thought that Mac OS is something poorly documented and developing kernel modules under “Mac” will be hard & complex. Until I actually tried it. It turns out, many things under Mac are actually more simple than under Windows. Just to give you some thoughts: On Mac OS X: 1. If you are going [...]
