Annoying feature, especially when the TV is being used as a monitor. To disable it, enter the menu with the remote control, type 0000, select Others, then scroll down (or up) to 4Hours Auto Stanby (sic) and turn it off.

Had the weirdest problem on Fedora 20. Any time I was in the terminal, if I used su to set user to root, once I exited back into my normal shell, any backspace would produce the ^? character.

This problem is solved thusly:

1. Open your terminal.
2. Edit → Profile Preferences → Compatibility
3. Select Backspace key generates, and change it from ASCII DEL to Automatic

And you're done!

Found at work in a Makefile.

So here I was, about to finish mounting things, and all I had left to do was to mount the Corsair H110 radiator onto the top of the Corsair 500R case. (I use the brand names so that anyone googling the problem can find the solution easier.) Now, mounting it proved to be difficult, because bolts needed to go through the fans, thread into the case, then thread into the radiator. It was hard to tell when they were properly threaded through the case and into the radiator. It was even harder to tell that the mounting holes were misaligned!

The case has 8 holes, 4 on a side, as does the radiator. The problem was, the sides were about a millimeter or two off - you could mount on side, but not the other. The further problem was that since you need to thread the bolt through two threads, both of which fairly tough metal, there was no flex space or slight angle that could get these things aligned.

The solution was as obvious as it wasn't obvious to me. Thankfully, someone recommended it: Simply drill out the holes. But first, some notes after the jump.

Cool stuff I like my bashrc to do for me. The full code is viewable after the jump.
- Grab aliases
- Make it so I can run instead of
- Trim directory in bash prompt to the last level, meaning no directory info is shown.
- Erase duplicate commands from the history.
- Have my prompt look a certain way: CMD_NUM $> [input here].
- Have my history formatted so it displays date and time.
- And, if bashrc is being run in a visual shell, then do a silly little logo, that I stole from somewhere else on the internet. Why not?

Had a problem: The colors were all distorted when playing movies on my new R9 280. I was so hoping not to have to install AMD drivers, but sure enough, installing the new 14.6 beta for linux worked just fine. I followed the instructions HERE and everything works beautifully!

I didn't bother doing or anything fancy, I just ran the executable, chose the default options, rebooted, et voila. I hope this helps anyone having a similar issue.

So this was a fun one. As I mentioned in a previous story, my car died between San Antonio and Houston. Flicked the turn signal, engine shut off. Fun.

So, in case anyone is googling the symptoms:

• Turn signal, left or right, makes it happen
• Other user-accessible controls make it happen: parking brake, emergency brake, radio
• Waiting some time after turning the car on charges the battery enough that you can take it out of park
• Dash lights light up: traction control, ABS, service vehicle soon, I think.
• Sometimes airbags turn off, sometimes cruise control is off, sometimes cruise control is partially off (light is half on, and it kicks you off every ten miles or so).
• Engine shuts off, power shuts off, including power steering; the whole car turns off.
• Lights dim briefly, but don't turn all the way off

If these are your symptoms, you need to replace the ignition module. As I understand it, the issue is the following:

All the user accessible electronics, including the ignition module, are sitting on the same ground plane. When the ignition module is broken, there's not so much a short, as a low resistance contact, which causes the voltage to dip. The car needs to see a high voltage from the ignition module - nominally, 12V - to run. When you change the status of the electronics (turn signal, parking brake, etc), the switching causes the voltage to dip further; this causes the ignition module to put out significantly less than 12V, and the car thinks the ignition got turned off, so the whole car goes dark. Replacing the ignition module solves this problem.

I think the part is about $200, and the labor probably $50-200, depending where you get it fixed. For such a scary-feeling problem, a surprisingly cheap fix.

In the short term, after starting your car, let it idle for five minutes or so. This charges the battery to a higher voltage (often 13-14v); the ignition module puts out VCC (that is, the positive supply voltage, which is the positive battery voltage, not a regulated 12V), and the dips aren't brutal enough to push the voltage below the ON threshold. That extra volt or two will save you. In addition, as long as you drive without using the signals, you should be ok. Unplug any power-hungry devices (GPS probably OK, inverter probably not). Radio is fine, but again, don't fiddle with it until the car's been running for a while.

Arduinos were always kind of expensive for their hardware; having an on-board programmer adds cost, and $30 for a board was a tough sell when an equivalent chip could be had for $2.

Of course, an Arduino is not a chip. It's not even really a development board. It's a learning tool. Arduinos are just about the best thing to happen to hobby electronics hacking since Intel invented the microcontroller; they allow a know-nothing like me five or six years ago to be able to control hardware with just a few lines of code. They're incredibly simple to use, and to get started with; the Arduino community is massive, and has so many educational materials that I often google for "Arduino [another piece of hardware]" when I want to learn about that piece of hardware, even when I'm not using an Arduino. Why? Because someone may have described its interfaces in simple terms, and I can use that knowledge for any other chip or development board.

But, thirty bucks is thirty bucks. I make little boards for $2.50 that are just as capable. Well, it turns out, so do other people - and theirs are fully Arduino-compatible, and pin-compatible with the Arduino Nano. Check it out - $2.50 for an Arduino. Well, I guess it's a little more considering shipping, but not by much.

At such a low cost, it might become convenient even for me to grab a couple and use them to bit-bang or excite some interface or rapidly prototype something. I absolutely love removing barriers to learning.

Relevant Joel On Software, in which Joel writes about barriers to entry and barriers to switching. He makes the following point: For every barrier of switching you eliminate, you will roughly double your sales. Similarly, for every barrier of entry we eliminate to hobby hacking, we can double the number of people who participate. One obvious barrier is that people don't know they can participate (thus limiting the number of potential entrants); another obvious barrier is that people don't know how to get started (thus limiting the number of potential entrants who transition to actual entrants.) This little device is in the latter category: a couple bucks, some free software, and you're blinking LEDs. I hope my writing is in the former.

Macs have lovely POSIX-compatible terminals, but many of the standard tools are different from Linux. So it goes.

The equivalent to lsusb is .

Now, if only the GUI would actually update for me when I try to do it graphically. I guess that's a lesson to me: If you're developing with the command line, stick with the command line, that's what it's for, that's why the mac has it.