- Added a brief bio.
- Consolidated my Ancient History and Early Modern History pages under a general History page, adding a new Medieval and Renaissance History page.
- On the three history subpages, and on the Computers and Physics and Astronomy added direct links to some of my more interesting (IMHO) blog posts in those fields.
Tag Archives: computers
A Windows Memory Leak Problem
Recently there were a few times when I was using VS Code under Windows and the response time got worse and worse. A reboot would fix it temporarily, but the problem would come back. A look at task manager showed that the Shell Infrastructure Host, sihost.exe, was using a lot of CPU. I thought about killing the process, but the dire warnings about system instability deterred me the first time.
College Reunion
I spent the weekend of June 16-19 at Carleton College. The occasion was my 50 year class reunion, for which I was a member of the gift committee, which in turn was a part of the overall planning committee. Mia (my wife) and I had a room on the third floor of Watson Hall, “3rd Watson” was how we would have referred to it back in the day. I don’t know if the current students refer to campus locations like that. I lived on “6th Watson” my senior year.
Keeping Slackware Current
What I wrote in Slackware Diary – 3 about keeping Slackware up to date is not correct:
slackpkg update gpg slackpkg update
Does not do the job. A closer look at told me that I had to also run
# slackpkg install-new # slackpkg upgrade-all # slackpkg clean-system
Time in Windows and Linux
By default, Windows assumes that the local system clock is set to local time, and updates it accordingly. Ubuntu Linux assumes that the clock is running UTC (essentially Greenwich Mean Time) and will update it on that assumption. Since it knows your location (you specified it at installation, and hopefully updated it when you moved) it will display the correct local time just like windows.
The problem comes when you have a dual boot (Linux and Windows) system. When you reboot from one OS into the other the new OS will assume the system clock is behaving according its own rules, even though the other OS was following its rules. To fix this:
Free42 on Ubuntu
I noted in Slackware Diary that I had installed Free42 under Slackware. As I wrote in 2006 I fell in love with HP calculators and their RPN notation back in the 1970s, and still find the conventional algebraic notation rather awkward. I no longer carry a physical calulator, but I have Free42 installed on my phone and my tablet, and on my Windows systems. Now I also have it on Slackware. So I circled back to see if I could install in on Ubuntu.
Slackware Diary – 3
Following up from last time:
gmcdavid@Tyrone:~$ flatpak uninstall com.visualstudio.code gmcdavid@Tyrone:~$ flatpak uninstall com.visualstudio.code-oss
I was prompted for the root password. I may come back to Flatpak on Slackware, but for now on to some other installations….
Slackware Diary – 2
Continuing from Slackware Diary – 1
Fixed the prompt by copying .bashrc and .profile (renamed as .bash_profile) from my primary Ubuntu system. This works and I have nice color prompts in Slackware. Need to see if I have scripts from my previous Slackware days to add environment variables, aliases, etc. Life in Slackware means a lot of time on the command line.
The next task on my list was to install Flatpak so I could use apps from Flathub
Slackware Diary – 1
First Impressions of Ubuntu 22.04
As I mentioned before, I installed the beta version of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on the same system where I had installed Slackware 15.0. The official release of that version of Ubuntu is out and I have accordingly upgraded that system. A few things that I have noticed so far: