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  • Computing resources optimisation [1B]

    Since yesterday a few issues have cropped up so I am rethinking some stuff. The Raspberry Pi has proved unable to cope with a particular feed I gave it, so reluctantly I am going to have to stop using it as a media player. It can cope with standalone playback but live playback in a…

  • Computing resources optimisation [1A]

    After looking at the best use of the computing resources I have the following changes are being implemented: Mediapc taken down from 12 GB RAM to 4 GB RAM The 8 GB from mediapc put into mainpc as they have similar memory specs, this gives mainpc a total of 32 GB. Mediapc manages just fine…

  • Raspberry Pi [3]

    Well after a bit more experimentation I found this thing called TboPlayer which is a GUI that is a frontend for OmxPlayer so it enables the Pi to do more user friendly media playback stuff. So Pi as media player looks even more feasible.  Storage costs also vary, and if you can get by with…

  • Raspberry Pi [2]

    Well now that I have this thing I have to find a use for it, and that use is proving to be best made out in hooking it to the TV and playing live Youtube content. It does however turn out able to play some existing video content, provided that you use the built in…

  • Optimising Gimp’s temporary and swap storage

    Whilst Gimp is a great piece of software, its default behaviour is to put temporary files into the home drive. If for some reason it needs to cache to disk it can become very slow. For me, I thought that creating my swap partition on the SSD would address this. However Gimp doesn’t make use…

  • Raspberry Pi

    As we all know the Raspberry Pi is a low cost mini computer that occupies a very small form factor. It runs on Linux and there is an enthusiastic community of supporters. I have elected to acquire a Pi to replace my satellite decoder box and dish for FTA TBN channels. Previously I had entered…

  • Canon EOS M100 / Computer Upgrade

    Well I have been using a Canon EOS M100 for some weeks as a replacement for my SX260 compact which while it still works, has problems with the shutter on the front of the lens jamming. And while the SX260 was sort of a high end travel zoom and I miss its 20x lens, I…

  • OpenID sidelined for FB/Google identity lockin

    OpenID is a great concept: to help you create a single identity that works across a range of Internet sites. However, it has been falling out of favour in the past few years because both Facebook and Google have provided their own replacements for it.  The reasons for these are supposedly for user convenience. However,…

  • Viewnior, Manjaro, Lubuntu, LXQt

    Viewnior is another image viewer that is included in most Linux distros. It is significantly better than Eye of Gnome (EOG) because it can handle very large images. As such I expect Viewnior will become the default image viewer on all of my Linux computers. I got to hear about Viewnior because I recently built…

  • Canon EOS M100 evaluation of low light performance

    One area of particular technical superiority of large sensor cameras (DSLRs and MILCs) is that they have a large lens which lets more light in, the result is much better low light performance than compact cameras. With this in mind I set about evaluating the low-light performance of the EOS M100 using trains as subjects.…