The problem is relatively simple: Sometimes I take images that are deliberately underexposed, or such that have important parts in the dark areas. This is then fixed with GIMP. But in order to choose which image to play with, I need to those details visible in some test image, so I can browse them with [...]
This is how to solve a special case, when a PDF file is given, but I want to add my remarks in some free space. The trick is to write the remarks into another single-page pdf file, so that the new text occupies the blank area in the original. In my case, I needed the [...]
A short note, since it’s so simple and so important. When Firefox gets painfully slow, just compact its Sqlite databases. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the quick fix is to close Firefox, go to where it holds its files, find the .sqlite files, and go (bash under Cygwin, in my case): $ for i [...]
The problem: In LaTeX, if I import an EPS file with \includegraphics and rotate it by 90 degrees, hell breaks lose in the resulting pdf file. My processing chain, in case you wonder, is latex, dvips and ps2pdf. I avoid pdflatex since it won’t import EPS (as far as I can recall) but only images [...]
IMPORTANT: This post may very well be useless mumbo-jumbo of how to do something that should never be done anyhow. I post it only because I had it all written down neatly when I discovered that I could have skipped it all. From what I’ve seen, every you’ll need is in the x86_64 repository, including [...]
The problem Sometimes software packages require setting some environment variables for its proper execution. When these variables clearly have no effect on any other applications in the system, that’s fine. When they want to manipulate some sensitive variables, which other applications may depend on, that’s a whole different story. When it’s a single executable, the [...]
This is just things I wrote down while playing with QEMU/KVM virtualization, for my own purposes of packing two existing computers into a third one. This is just some random jots. I’ve written a similar post in 2024 (14 years after this one). Log files There are definitely two files one wants to peek at [...]
What I wanted All I wanted was a software RAID-5 on three disks with a whole disk encryption on Fedora 12. For some reason, I thought the installation script would do that for me. The relevant part in the installation procedure was kind enough to allow me to set it up in the GUI, but [...]
Introduction I have an old Mustek 600VA UPS with RS-232 connection. Since I change the battery every couple of years on my own, I find it pretty pointless to throw it away. And my brand new computer (running Fedora 12) has an RS-232 port if one insists to use a connector on the motherboard. Needless [...]
Copying gigabytes of disk can get the system sluggish. On Linux, the solution is so simple. If process 18898 happens to take control of your disk, just go: ionice -c 3 -p 18898 And you have your computer back. “-c 3″ means class 3, which is idle class. In other words, take the disk when [...]