Travel, Technology, Thoughts
This morning I went down to Bondi Beach to check out Sculpture by the Sea.
I did a pretty good job of getting in before all the crowds, although, there was still many people along the coastal walk.
The photos below are just a mere sample of the many sculptures along the walk between Bondi and Tamarama and it is well worth checking out in person over the next three weeks.
Read moreFor the last year or so I have been struggling with my laptop overheating under Ubuntu. Upon upgrading to the latest beta of Ubuntu 12.10 I have managed to completely solve the heating problem and as a result increased my battery life by more than an hour.
Two different problems have caused the heating problem. The first, a power-regression bug on i7 processors was resolved in Ubuntu 12.04 with an updated kernel.
The second is caused by the Nvidia Optimus Hybrid Graphics card in my laptop not being properly controlled by Ubuntu. Problems with Hybrid Graphics under linux are well documented and there are quite a few different “solutions” available, however, I have been unable to get any to work until now.
A few months back I installed the Bumblebee project, and despite the packages successfully installing, the hybrid graphics card never worked and battery life remained terrible.
Upon upgrading to the latest Ubuntu beta I noticed a problem in the logs during the install of one of the bumblebee packages: bbswitch-dkms
The package would “successfully” install, however, the terminal output would show that the kernel module was never built.
The problem lies in missing kernel header packages. While the Ubuntu Wiki pages do not detail any requirement for the installation of kernel headers other sites do, however, these other sites only focus on the kernel headers for the currently installed kernel. And, if you update the kernel without new headers, it is possible that the kernel module will no longer work and the overheating problem will return.
This is how I setup my system so that I would always have the latest official Ubuntu kernel and headers with bumblebee working:
1. Install the linux-headers-generic package:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
2. Setup the Bumblebee PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
3. Update the package information:
sudo apt-get update
4. Install the bbswitch-dkms package:
sudo apt-get install bbswitch-dkms
Before moving on make sure that the output from the above command shows that the module was successfully installed.
5. Install the rest of Bumblebee:
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia
6. Restart and then test if Bumblebee is working:
a) glxgears
b) optirun glxgears
The second command runs the opengl test using the Optimus graphics card and the output in terminal of the FPS should be much greater than the previous command. Bumblebee should now be successfully installed and you should notice a large decrease in CPU heat and an increase in battery life.
In my opinion during the install of the bbswitch-dkms package a check should be made for the required kernel headers to build the kernel module, if the packages aren’t found a proper error and suggested solution, such as the installation of the headers package should be suggested. A silent fail that keeps the rest of the installation running only provides the end user that false hope that things are working fine.
The final city visited in my North American adventure was Montreal, Quebec, Canada. And this part of the adventure turned out to be most unexpectedly different from everywhere else.
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After spending three days in New York with two other colleagues we parted ways and I caught the Amtrak from Penn Station to Baltimore. The train ride down was a highlight of the trip. On the three hour journey we passed through five states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. I was a little disappointed to not get off the train in Philadelphia as in early planning for the trip I was going to spend a few days there but as it turned out I saw more than enough other places in my adventures.
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After AAAI finished two friends and I travelled from Toronto for a few days visiting New York City.
We flew into La Guardia at midday on Saturday and caught the bus from the airport to Manhattan. Our first bit of fun came when, in a little bit of traveller confusion, we failed to get off the bus at the right spot to change to the subway. So before we know it we are a little bit lost in the middle of Harlem.
Read moreI spent the last day in Toronto visiting Niagara Falls which is about two hours south-west of the city.
After some debate about how to get there we settled on catching the train – which is what I wanted as I love trains.
The train from Toronto was very impressive. Double deck, nice seats, and power outlets for every seat. After about an hour we had to change to a bus to complete the journey – which again was double deck and very impressive for public transport.
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Last week I was in Toronto, Canada attending the 26th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference. Toronto was a great experience and is a rather interesting city.
I flew out of Sydney on Air Canada direct to Toronto with a very small layover in Vancouver. This is my first trip outside of Australia/New Zealand and I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect. It turns out a 13.5 hour flight, 1 hour layover, 4.5 hour flight is a very long time.
Read moreI spent this afternoon soaking up the mid-winter sun at Bondi Beach.
Below are a series of photos of the beautiful day.
Read moreI spent yesterday at Cockatoo Island exploring this year’s Biennale of Sydney.
My favourite installation was of a Chinese classroom where some of the desks had animations projected onto them telling a story.
Below are a few photos, however, the Biennale is best experienced in person. It is free, and runs until mid September.
Read moreVivid Sydney is on again and once again it is a spectacular display of lights and fun.
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