Posts
Gary Brooker R.I.P.
I just learned that Gary Brooker, the co-founder of Procol Harum, died six months ago. He was one of the finest songwriters in the rock genre. His lyricist for most of his songs was Keith Reid. The original band had other fine musicians, notably B. J. Wilson (drums), Robin Trower (guitar), and Matthew Fisher (organ).
August 26, 2022
Hunter Biden Emails
#Biden#Ukraine#Software#Notmuch
Now that the Hunter Biden emails from the famous laptop are available, it’s possible to download them to one’s own computer and examine them at leisure, without using the very overloaded site, and without requiring a network connection. I accomplished this using the mail indexer notmuch, and my own fork of the sup email client that uses notmuch as a backend.
May 17, 2022
Windows, UTC, and the hardware clock
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Ubuntu#Windows
Users of Windows / Linux dual boot systems might notice that the time of day is correct in LInux but incorrect in Windows. I ran into this problem with a PC at our local library. There is a fix for this, but to explain the cause of the problem in the first place, we have to look at the 40-year history of the IBM PC and subsequent compatible computers.
March 16, 2021
Linux on Lenovo Ideapad 3
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Ubuntu#Windows
I was asked to install Linux alongside Windows 10 on a new Lenovo Ideapad 3. There were several problems to solve: getting Windows setup to not require a Microsoft account, fixing the boot-related options in the BIOS, finding a working version of Linux Mint, and getting the touchpad to work.
February 10, 2021
Fixing Guest Session on Linux Mint 20
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Ubuntu
It appears that out of the box, the guest session feature of Linux Mint 20 (and Ubuntu 20.04) is broken. In the Mate edition of Mint, this feature is enabled in the Login Window portion of the Control Center. But if you attempt to login as a guest, an error dialog pops up saying “Could not update ICEauthority file /run/user/999/ICEauthority”. The desktop eventually appears, but only after a very long delay.
December 12, 2020
Fixing UEFI boot order on HP Stream 14
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Ubuntu#Windows
I’m in the process of installing Linux Mint 19 on our little library’s several Windows computers. The latest candidate was an HP Stream 14, a small, lightweight laptop that is crippled in various ways, so I wouldn’t recommended it except as a cheap toy. I was finally able to get Mint and Windows 10 to dual-boot successfully, but it took a day’s worth of internet searching combined with lots of trial and error.
December 11, 2020
ThinkPad T450s boots slowly after RAM upgrade
After I installed an 8 GB RAM stick in the single DIMM slot in a ThinkPad T450s, the system didn’t seem to be powering on successfully. The usual ThinkPad logo didn’t appear within a few seconds. Instead, the screen remained black for quite a long time. I powered off the system and tried reseating the DIMM, but the problem remained. It turns out that I wasn’t patient enough. According to a Lenovo forum post, it may take a couple of minutes for the system to boot the first time after a RAM upgrade, as it “checks timings and configures the slots.” Subsequent boots go quickly, as expected.
November 27, 2020
Call forwarding on Tracfone / AT&T
Recent (at least the last five years) Android phones have a call forwarding option in the settings of the built-in phone app. But it’s very inconvenient: once you enable “always forward” and enter a phone number, the phone loses the additional settings for “when busy”, “when unanswered”, and “when unreachable”. These settings normally point to the regional voicemail access number. So when you later turn off “always forward”, you have to re-enter those three addtional settings, by typing the voicemail number three times.
October 30, 2020
Koha, Mint 19, and silent printing
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Epson#Koha
The Koha manual describes how to tell Firefox to not display a print dialog box when printing a slip on a receipt printer. But those instructions are specific to Firefox on Windows. I’m in the process of replacing our library’s Windows 7 installations with Linux Mint 19.3, and I found that I I had to do things slightly differently on Linux. The first step was to install printer drivers. Our library uses an Epson TM-88IV receipt printer. The Linux drivers for this obsolete printer can be found here. After unpacking the file (using tar xvfz), the install.sh script must be run as root. When the script prompts for a distribution name, select the latest one from the list offered, even if it might be very old. For example, the latest Ubuntu listed is 9.04, but that one works for any more recent version of Ubuntu or Mint.
October 24, 2020