Someone just emailed me telling me that they liked the KDE lights in the building in my header above. They want to know how I did it, and honestly, I cannot remember the exact steps, but I played with the “blinds” filter in Gimp until it looked like actual lights. Here is the KDE logo that I am talking about in my header image:
Are you rocking an Intel 945GM chipset with the integrated Intel 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)? If so, this little tweak has helped 3 of us thus far in #kubuntu-devel with KDE 4 and compositing effects.
Step 1: xorg.conf editing
Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller" Driver "i810" BusID "PCI:0:2:0" Option "AccelMethod" "xaa" EndSection
This is what our device section for the graphics card looks like. We added the “AccelMethod” “xaa” option.
Step 2: ~/.bashrc
export INTEL_BATCH=1
Added that line to our ~/.bashrc file.
We then restarted X with a swift Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and then tested this setup with glxgears and we all received an average FPS of well over 1000. Prior to this, my highest FPS was a low 900. After these little tweaks, composite never worked so smoothly in KDE 4 in the past.
Does this tweak work for others using say Compiz? Are there some more Intel tweaks that you know of that help out as well? If so, add them to the comment and attempt to explain exactly what they do. Thanks!
What CPU cooler do you recommend? My specs are this right here:
I am looking for a cooler that isn’t to expensive, somewhat quiet, very good, and hopefully doesn’t have those plastic motherboard connectors I previously warned about. Thus far I have read a few reviews, but I don’t always trust those, since most websites tend to BS their results in order not to piss off the person who sent them the free components. Some of the shops I buy from and trust are Newegg, Directron, Tiger Direct (local), Frys (local), Microcenter (local), and sometimes hit up Amazon for stuff. Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
If you are planning on building a new computer in the near future, I would like to recommend you stay away from CPU coolers that have the plastic push/snap pins such as those in the image.
The past couple of days I noticed that while compiling code, my CPU temperatures went up above 70°C. After further inspection, I noticed that one of the corner posts on the CPU cooler came loose from the motherboard, therefor not coming in full contact with the CPU itself. So if you have a choice of CPU cooling, remember to shy away from the coolers with the plastic posts that snap into the motherboard. These are flat out garbage. After cleaning up the CPU and cooler, I remounted it, and now my temps when compiling are a toasty 60°C. I will be purchasing a new cooler in the near future to replace my current one, as even 60°C is a little to high for my liking. My server is watercooled with a custom setup I built many years ago, and when I have a couple of builds going on, it never gets above 35°C.
I have been messing with a project through the university and we decided that we would go with the Boost library for the project, so to read up on Boost and how to use it, I decided I would attack Project Euler using Boost. One area that Boost really showed its strength was determining how many Sundays fell on the first day of the month between January 1, 1901 and December 31, 2000. In just a few lines, the answer was apparent. Here is the lines of code that answers this problem, and answers it immediately. I had used other calendar solutions in C++ in the past, but the gregorian.hpp library is fast.
#include <iostream> #include "boost/date_time/gregorian/gregorian.hpp" int main(void) { using namespace boost::gregorian; int count = 0; date_period dp(date(1901, Jan, 1), date(2000, Dec, 31)); day_iterator iter(dp.begin()); while (iter != dp.end()) { if (iter->day() == 1 && iter->day_of_week().as_enum == 0) count++; ++iter; } std::cout << count << std::endl; return 0; }
The answer takes milliseconds, it is just that fast. Right now I would like to replace my gmpxx libraries for big numbers with a boost library and I think all of my Euler answers will be “boosted.”
It is about that time of the year, where people start bringing up their New Year Resolutions. For those of you who do make resolutions, what are some of them?
A few of mine would be:
Pretty boring, but who knows, I might add something interesting, like sharing a meal with a polar bear or something 
