CaptainSpam @captainspam@social.exclaimindustries.net

Oh, all right, I'll pin a useful toot:

Some amount of this account will refer to my comic, The Dementia of Magic, at https://dementiaofmagic.net. Others may refer to nothing really at all.

Nope, the recently-released v3.2.1 didn't fix it, either. Maybe I should file an issue after all.

Oh, forgot to mention: The RX 5600 XT was returned. Too much display corruption. I'm guessing that, while PCIe should in theory be forward-compatible, it really isn't (my motherboard has 3.0, the card was 4.0).

Instead, I got an RX 580. Now this is working much better. Still a few quirks, though I'm chalking those up to KScreen in KDE. Seems to forget a display exists if it's DisplayPort and the monitor falls asleep, for instance. But, mostly has been working admirably.

Huh, weird. For some reason, my Mastodon instance is serving up bad CSS regarding user avatars on detailed status views. I can see when the change was made in the code, but the HTML and CSS aren't agreeing on how big the avatar should be.

Would be nice if I could find another v3.2.0 instance to see if it's just me, but if it weren't, I'd think someone would've filed an issue by now...

(you won't notice anything if you're viewing this from another instance or my RSS widget)

I once again find myself having been sent a physical — PHYSICAL, mind you — Amazon holiday catalogue.

It's not nearly as ridiculously thick as last year's, though, so that's an improvement.

I have to admit, I can at least respect a microwaveable burrito with this level of precision in its cooking instructions.

And, alongside the Live Wallpaper app, the Desert Bus Widget app now also has Rustproof Bee Shed mode! You'll need to remove and re-add the widget to change this. There'll be a handy config screen to do the job.

On Github: https://github.com/CaptainSpam/dbwidget/releases/tag/v1.2.0

On the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.exclaimindustries.dbwidget (the update will show up after review)

With the surprise new shift banners from Rustproof Bee Shed, the Desert Bus Shift Banner Live Wallpaper now has support for them! Just re-select the wallpaper and go to the settings screen to turn on Bee Shed mode. And I'll be updating it again soon because Dusk Guard just looks real wonky as it stands. Oops.

On Github: https://github.com/CaptainSpam/dbshiftwallpaper/releases/tag/v1.2.0

On the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.exclaimindustries.dbshiftwallpaper

(yes, there is a second verse to the theme (well, more of a second half of that verse before the cab shows up), but just going on the way it's presented, it's still amusing)

Wait... Will Smith's character took a *taxi* from West Philadelphia to Bel Air?

Raspberry Pi experiments are things that don't end, clearly. The IR sensor part still needed finishing, so I picked up a case that has a slot on the bottom for GPIO cables to snake out, as opposed to the case I already had which lacked it (unless I drilled a slot in the case, and I lack the tools to do that).

This seemed like a good plan, until it turned out the connectors I'm using are too tall for the new case to close. Arrg. Maybe I need a full-on ribbon cable for the GPIO header...

It's ironic how these days, a TV tuned to a dead channel is usually a bright, happy shade of blue.

Current results on the AMD card:

Outlook has been upgraded to "interesting". It looks like the Two Point Hospital issues are related to ambient occlusion, and this is common to many Unity engine games. Unclear if it's Unity or actually the Mesa implementation of that shader. Workarounds exist.

The Chrome video corruption issue is likely related, as turning off hardware rendering fixes it.

Core desktop things still show improvement over Nvidia cards. All in all, still interesting results.

Cabin fever demanded experimentation, so I picked up an AMD video card to see if their Linux drivers really were better than Nvidia's. Initial results are troubling; though some core desktop things are noticeably better, odd video corruption exists in Chrome and Two Point Hospital had serious texture/lighting flickering going on. More investigation is required.

I mean, it's required LATER. Like maybe the weekend? I've put the old card back in for now.

We've done it, folks. We've reached the point in computing technology where the answer to "But will it run Crysis?" has switched to "No, because it turns out the original Crysis was HELLA unoptimized".

Further notes about the Sync update, apparently now the damn thing won't ever stop pestering me on startup about finding a wi-fi network to do updates on its own. Given the car's parked in a basement parking garage all day and I'm several floors above it through a couple layers of concrete, that's basically never going to be an option unless I move. Grr.

Regarding the Ford Sync firmware update from a couple days back:

Well, at the very least, manually making the directory structure it implicitly wanted and arranging the files that way did the trick, and Sync accepted the update. So I guess that was right? I don't know.

Other interesting fact, each of the tarballs contained a shell script to execute their contents (with actual logic), implying Sync is likely running something Unix-ish. Neat.

All right. It's time to get back to work.

(image attached)

Oh. Well, that might explain why the hard disk connected to the Pi was making head reset noises. Turns out the combination of the disk and the TV tuner are drawing more power than the Pi's USB ports can put out. The good news, at least, is that the drive likely isn't bad, and as such, I now have a spare 1TB external hard disk, which I'm sure will be useful for something.

But, time for another NewEgg order, this time for a powered USB hub...