Monitors won’t sleep (power management) if synergy is running

Similar question to Monitor won’t enter power save mode, however I only experience the problem under synergy. Screensaver settings work, but the monitors never go to sleep. When synergy is not running, monitors go to sleep at the interval set in Power Mgmt Preferences. I’m running synergy under my user account. Dell Desktop, Ubuntu 11.04, standard install video drivers (installing the proprietary drivers causes many errors.)

Turns out, this behavior is caused by screenSaverSync=true and the fix is screenSaverSync=false. Pic shows the windows GUI placement.

Modeling Theater Sets with POV-Ray (Part 3)

This post is part of a how-to series for using POV-Ray to model theater sets. Here are links to Part 1 and Part 2. In part 3 I talk about techniques for creating images from the model that can be used as drawings and plans.
Continue reading “Modeling Theater Sets with POV-Ray (Part 3)” →

Modeling Theater Sets with POV-Ray (Part 2)

In part one we saw how to setup a basic scene with POV-Ray and render it to an image. We also declared a bunch of standard size scenery flats for use in modeling our set. Oh, and I warned there would be math.

To model our set in POV-Ray, we’ll do basically the same thing we do when building the set on-stage… we’ll take our standard flats, move and spin them around, then fix them in place. Continue reading “Modeling Theater Sets with POV-Ray (Part 2)” →

Modeling Theater Sets with POV-Ray

I got a lot of compliments about the computer model I built for Harvey’s set and a few people asked me how I did it. My way is a bit computer geek intense, so I don’t recommend you do it my way unless you’re a math graphing geek like me. If you’re used to creating maps for games like Unreal, you should check out other CAD and 3d modeling tools, like Blender… But anyway, here’s how I did it.
Continue reading “Modeling Theater Sets with POV-Ray” →

Firefox and plugins

I prefer Firefox as my web browser on Windows. There are three add-ons I consider absolutely necessary: NoScript, Adblock, and the Adblock Filterset updater. Some that I find nice to have: All-in-one Sidebar, Web Developer, DownThemAll, Tab Mix Plus, and Greasemonkey. And the theme I prefer, Littlefox. I’ll probably want some plugins, too.

It’s easy enough to perform these steps manually, but I’d like to at least consider my options for automation.

The standard installer doesn’t seem to support much, just an ini file. To be fair, I didn’t pursue that thread very far because I found this long discussion which details the community’s MSI efforts.

FrontMotion provides an MSI file. They also provide a roll-your-own installer system for a subscription fee. I’m sure there are corporate admins who can really benefit from that, but for my personal use, I’m not only lazy, I’m also cheap.

There used to be a nifty extension called Mass Installer that would install all the other extensions you listed in a text file. This has been discontinued, but clever folks outlined a similar method that would work later in the same thread. That seems to fit my need well enough.

The html file is a script to read the text file and launch installs. The text file contains URLs for the extension installs. Save them in the same directory, with the same basenames, extensions .html and .txt, and view the .html in Firefox. Simple, yes?

The only problem I see is that the install URLs contain version information. So, at some point, the file may “roll off” when enough later versions are released. I’m not concerned about out-of-date extensions, since it’s one click to update all extensions.*(or is this part of All-in-one Sidebar?)

Ideally, the script would take the extension homepage URL and discover the xpi link on it. This could be perilous to script if separate extensions exist for major Firefox releases. Whether or not I try that, I’ll eventually put these files where I can hit them directly via HTTP (but this requires changing the code, too.)

System backups and restores

One big reason I want to be efficient with work tasks is to have time for play. I’m a computer gamer. Unfortunately, this means Windows directly on the hardware (as opposed to emulation or virtualization from a different host OS.) This also means, I should be prepared to regularly rebuild it.

Enter the free-for-home-users DriveImage XML from Runtime Software.

It only supports Windows XP+, but I don’t see this as a serious drawback as Knoppix can be used to recover from Linux problems I’ll encounter (generally my own stupid mistakes). Driveimage XML fits the bill for an easy way to get back to a clean Windows XP without going through the install, pre-SP2 patch, SP2 patch, and finally post-SP2 patch.