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Fedora 13, nVidia, X and GLX oddity

Inside the new computer is an nVidia GTX260 video card, which I think is pretty spiffy. It also means I should be able to activate all the cool Compiz eye candy.

While I was running the alpha and beta versions of Fedora 13, everything with the new computer (aside from a couple of minor USB related issues) was working quite nicely. Had the nVidia drivers installed and running. The Compiz eye candy was very pretty.

And then Fedora 13 was officially released. Updated everything, grabbed the ‘official’ nVidia drivers off rpmfusion, and then the pretty eye candy was gone!

Hmm, strange. Let’s try reinstalling the drivers. No joy. Let’s try reinstalling the Fedora. No joy.

Do all the usual troubleshooting. Why is there no GLX (explaining the lack of Compiz eye candy).

A couple of kernel updates later, and still no joy.

All I have to show are some strange things being logged to the Xorg log file and no pretty eye candy. Google is of no help either. Annoying, but there is still video, and if I XRender instead of OpenGL for compositing (in KDE), I can still get a few effects. It’s all very strange.

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Polarizer play

Took advantage of a sunny-but-not-roasting-hot afternoon to go outside and play with the polarizing filter I bought a little while ago. I haven’t used it too much because I just keep forgetting to pack it along with me. So I wandered up the block to the ponds, set up the camera on the tripod and started to play.

First, without any filter. Pointed the camera down the street at a lone cloud in the sky, with the sun mostly to my left.

f4.0, 1/1000 s, ISO 100, aperture priority

No polarizing filter f4.0, 1/1000 s, ISO 100, aperture priority

Then put the polarizer on and turned it to get the minimum amount of polarization. The image is a little darker because the filter does have a little bit of tint to it.

f4.0, 1/1000 s, ISO 100, aperture priority

Polarizing filter minimum polarizing f4.0, 1/1000 s, ISO 100, aperture priority

Turned the polarizer 90° to get the maximum amount of polarization. The effect is quite dramatic. The sky gets much darker and really makes the cloud pop out. The greens really come through too and the colours look more saturated.

f4.0, 1/400 s, ISO 100, aperture priority

Polarizing filter maximum polarizing f4.0, 1/400 s, ISO 100, aperture priority

Next I zoomed in on the clouds down by the horizon. First with no filter

f8, 1/500 s, ISO 100, auto

No polarizing filter f8, 1/500 s, ISO 100, auto

Then with the filter on and turned to minimum polarizing. The clouds look pretty flat and boring, and don’t really stand out at all.

f5.6, 1/400 s, ISO 100, auto

Polarizing filter minimum polarization f5.6, 1/400 s, ISO 100, auto

Turning the filter 90 degrees really makes things pop out.

f5.6, 1/250 s, ISO 100, auto

Polarizing filter max polarization f5.6, 1/250 s, ISO 100, auto

Will definitely have to remember to keep the polarizer with me.

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7 years, 2211 blog entries

Last week the blog ticked over the 7 year mark and I managed to miss it. 7 whole years. Wow, that’s like ancient in Internet years.

On to year number 8.

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Gas and oil prices

In a Twitter response to the last blog post about gas prices, @LincJosh asked

I would like to see this with a price per barrel comparison! #rippedoff

Being the geek that I am, how could I resist this.

Plotted is the price per gallon of regular gasoline (solid line, left axis) and something called the “Weekly United States Spot Price FOB Weighted by Estimated Import Volume” (dashed line, right axis).

On a price per barrel basis (regular gas – solid line, US crude – dashed line),

The numbers are all ripped out of Petroleum Price Database kindly provided by the US Energy Information Administration and used in its raw unprocessed form.

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10 years of gas prices

When I first got the Camry, I decided to keep track of how much gas I was putting into it. It was a way of putting ThinkDB to work on my Handspring Platinum.

Although the graph only indicates what I’ve paid for gas over the years, it should track reasonably well with the regional and national averages.