Mark's Expeditions in Technology and Life

Greetings from the Nut Hutch. Thailand is in the middle of their Songkran celebrations and it is very hot outside. So I thought today would be a good day to take a break from the heat and celebrations to finish discussing my Stereo Pi project. In my previous post, link , I listed the parts I used in this project. Now it is time to put them all together to make a working system. Speakers Because they were the first component that I had all the parts for, the first thing I assembled were the speakers. As stated before, the speakers I used were originally designed for use with a car stereo. In order to use them properly with a home stereo, some special care had to be taken in their construction. The first has to do with the size of the speaker box. If the box is too large, the low frequencies produced by the speakers will not be heard. On the flip side, if the box is too small, the lows produced will be muddled. I decided to use a very unscientific method to figure out the size of bo...

Hello again from the Nut Hutch. I must apologize for my lengthy absence. The reasons for this absence are why I call my domicile the "Nut Hutch". For example, in the last couple of months, I have started to learn to speak, read, and write Thai. Meanwhile, the wife started a new job that keeps her busy for a longer period of time. Then the pièce de résistance, the LCD Screen, keyboard, and the SSD in my laptop all decided to die in a cascade of failures that would have been funny if the repair parts were not so expensive. Because my laptop was never sold in Thailand, I had to import the LCD Screen and Keyboard from overseas. Finally, after a month and a half of waiting, the parts arrived and I was able to effect the needed repairs. Needless to say, the laptop is now back in fighting shape. Replacing the SSD in the laptop meant that I needed to reinstall Manjaro Deepin Community Edition (Manjaro Deepin CE). Since I regularly backup my home folder, I did not loose any data. Even...

Greetings from the nut hutch that is my house here in Thailand. While Thailand doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas like we do in the West, the Expat community here does. So I have been off visiting friends, doing some Christmas shopping, and picking up the latest cold that is going around some of the students I tutor. Next thing I know, it is the middle of December, and I have not put out a blog entry in a while. During my "break", I was issued a challenge by a fellow Expat. To install and use the Manjaro Deepin Community Edition for a month. Since I was impressed with Manjaro's implementation of the Gnome DE, link , I decided to take up that challenge. Overview Before I get too far into this post, an explanation needs to be given. There are two projects that use the Deepin name, and to make it even more confusing, they are developed and maintained by the same company, Wuhan Deepin Technology. They are responsible for not only the Deepin Desktop Environm...

One of the things that interests many Linux users is the sheer diversity of distributions (distros) of Linux available. While some users will settle on a distro and that will become the version they use for a long time. Others will do what is called distro-hopping. They will move from distro to distro until they find one that either "clicks" with them or one that meets all of their needs. As a long time Linux user myself, I have always been interested in different Linux distros. For a long time, I have used Ubuntu/ Debian based distros such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Sometimes I would step out of my comfort zone and try other distros of Linux such as the Gentoo based Sabayon Linux, link , or loose my mind completely and try out Slackware, link . Needless to say, those forays were not successful. While I enjoyed the experience, I either found them too unstable for use as a daily driver, or they just took too much work to manage properly. I always ended up going back to an Ubunt...

In a previous post, link , I talked about my home media server. Since that post, the server described decided to take a permanent vacation. Since its departure was sudden and surprising, it will be sorely missed. The journey required to replace it was both fun and frustrating. It also gave me an opportunity to teach my wife a little bit about how computers are made. Since every journey begins with a step, let us take the first one together. The server was running perfectly as I was applying a security patch. Upon reboot however, the system decided that it did not want to post. After some troubleshooting, and removing one stick of RAM, the system was able to boot. While this was a step in the right direction, it was not a solution. Withing five minutes, the system would freeze and require a hard reset. After the hard reset, the system would not post. So some more in depth testing was needed. In order to this testing, I needed another system that used DDR3 for RAM and used the LGA-115...

Do you like being a space pirate pillaging your way across the universe? Maybe you are more the entrepreneurial type who wants to establish economic dominance instead. Or do you just want to be a space cowboy smuggling contraband from one world to another. If so, X3: Reunion is the game for you. Released in 2005 by Egosoft, X3: Reunion is an open-world space simulation that allows you to play the game your way. When you start a new game in X3: Reunion, you are presented with several choices. One of which is to play the game's campaign, and the other choices allow you to play the game outside of the campaign. Whichever choice you make, the ultimate journey you embark upon is entirely up to you. For first time players, I suggest at least starting the main campaign. This will allow you to get comfortable with the game world and controls before you strike out on your own. This is because the main campaign of X3: Reunion feels like one long tutorial. The story slowly unfolds as you c...