Michael J. Hammel

Building a better today…because tomorrow is in question…

General

Rants and Raves.

After experimenting a bit I found that AcidRIP wrapped around mplayer’s mencoder produced much smaller AVI files for my archives. In general, I was able to use the following process top rip DVDs: Put the DVD in the drive and click on “Load DVD”. Choose the first title (listed by […]

AcidRIP – smaller and faster is better

Thu October 06, 2005 in General / Linux / Video tagged MythTV / Video (updated 7390 days ago)

I was working on my book at lunch today and discovered an interesting and (as far as I can tell) undocumented requirement when using the Displace filter. The source and map layers must have the same size. Displace provides a menu of potential map layers in two menus (one for […]

GIMP Displace tip

Thu June 16, 2005 in General / GIMP / Linux tagged GIMP (updated 7390 days ago)

After all that work with my synaptics pad I finally decided to – essentially – disable it. I bought a $20 notebook optical USB mouse and it works fine. So now, after the system comes up, I just issue synclient FingerHigh=320 and plug in the USB mouse. So why did […]

The last thing about my Aspire 1690

Sun June 12, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / General / Linux tagged aspire / GIMP (updated 7390 days ago)

My CDRW/DVD RW won’t play DVDs. It handles CDs fine, but DVD playing doesn’t work. Checking the logs I found the message: Jun 11 22:58:23 kepler kernel: ATAPI device hdb: Jun 11 22:58:23 kepler kernel: Error: Illegal request — (Sense key=0x05) Jun 11 22:58:23 kepler kernel: Media region code is […]

Acer Aspire 1690 – changing region code for DVD-RW

Sun June 12, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / General / Linux / Video tagged acer / aspire / yum (updated 7390 days ago)

After I got X running again late last night, I didn’t look too deeply at how everything else was working. One thing that stopped working was the Synaptics pad. Before X died (and was resurrected) the Synaptics driver was loading and working fine. But that was with my own kernel, […]

ACPI update and Synaptics changes

Wed June 08, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / General / Hardware / Linux tagged acer / aspire / gnome / graphics / intel (updated 7390 days ago)

The i915 driver snapshot from freedesktop.org fixed my problems with the video on my Acer Aspire 1690. It even allows the graphical boot (aka rhgb) to function again. But I still can’t use the DVD player. I still get lots of errors related to accessing hdb in /var/log/messages. I’ll have […]

Laptop Update: video fixed

Tue June 07, 2005 in Aiptek Tablet / General / Hardware / Video tagged acer / aspire / Video (updated 7390 days ago)

Everything was working well today. I took the laptop over to Panera Bread at lunch and got the wireless working there with a little script (the RH network config doesn’t bring it up for some reason). Then I managed to squeeze in a little writing work on my book. But […]

More laptop troubles

Tue June 07, 2005 in Aiptek Tablet / General / Hardware tagged atrpms / rpm / Writing / yum (updated 7390 days ago)

More info on support for using the Acer Aspire w/Intel i915GM video: Here is an updated 915resolution, based on the 855resolution tool. Here are snapshots of the dri driver for the i915 from X.org. Note that you need to have X11R6.8.2 to work with this driver (and even then it […]

Sushi break

Mon June 06, 2005 in General (updated 7541 days ago)

Since my last entry the world has moved a little for me. It moved me to Colorado Springs, Colorado. I’m here with yet another company (I’ve lost count now how many that makes) to provide my skills as a Linux professional. I’m coding – a little. I’m running lots of […]

Where in the world is ….

Tue May 24, 2005 in General tagged Linux / linux format / Lost / Open Source / Writing (updated 7554 days ago)

My daily trauling of news sources today brought me around to this very old article: Evolution, not revolution, in PC’s future | CNET News.com. What I found interesting about the images of future PCs is that they all look like bad sci-fi props. Visionary design my buttocks. PCs will never […]

Evolution of the PC = no design whatsoever.

Thu March 03, 2005 in General / Linux / Software Development tagged epia / MythTV (updated 7637 days ago)

My new book on GIMP is going well so far. I’ve received a template with styles for OpenOffice from the publisher that I need to use. Up to this point I’ve been doing everything in vi. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the book being submitted that way, though I do get […]

The book writing process

Sun February 27, 2005 in Art and Graphics / General / Writing tagged GIMP / Lost / Writing