Perry’s weblog

Watch TV on windows. No, not Windows, but windows. Andersen Windows has shown off a new product that allows you to use a large bay window as an entertainment center. It sends a current through the window when you want the window to be clear, as in a normal window, but turning the current off makes the window opaque so that it can be used as a projection screen for watching TV or DVDs.

CNN.com – Legendary hacker to get unleashed and online – Jan. 19, 2003

Kevin Mitnick is coming back online tomorrow. Slashdot is running an interview with him. He’ll be using a computer for the first time since his sentence tomorrow on TechTV.

This thead on the Gentoo forums has some neat info for improving desktop performance in X. I think I’ll give it a try over the weekend…

I’ve been gathering parts for a new/upgraded computer. I picked up a 256MB stick of Crucial PC2100 RAM at Best Buy this past week for $35 after rebates. I’ve also ordered a new heat sink, fan, and rounded IDE and floppy cables. The fan I ordered is a Vantec Stealth fan, should be nice and quiet.
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I emerged prelink on my Gentoo system today. Then went through and updated a couple packages, and prelinked most of the binaries on my system. Can’t really feel any big performance difference to tell ya the truth. Here are the directions that I followed. Pretty simple and straight-forward.

I’ve also done some tweaking of the CFLAGS on my system.
CHOST=’i686-pc-linux-gnu’
CFLAGS=’-march=pentium3 -mcpu=pentium3 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer’
CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS

Nothing too special I guess. I recompiled Mozilla with them, and, again, no real performance difference. I guess every little bit helps though.

Fonts in Linux have always been a sore point for me. I’d install a new version of RedHat once or twice a year, would see the ugly fonts in Netscape, and take it off after a couple of weeks. My eyes would hurt after surfing for more than a few minutes.

Recently, it seems as if developers have gotten things together and fonts are starting to look much better. Surfing the web in Phoenix is now a pleasure. Things look almost as good as they do in Internet Explorer in Windows. I’m very happy. I can now use Linux on a daily basis, leaving Windows for game playing. See the extended entry for a small screenshot of a story on Slashdot.
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