Matt Schmandt

I have been using Beryl for about two months. Beryl adds OpenGL effects to the desktop; similar to Areo Glass on Vista. From what I have seen in Vista, Microsoft keeps the effects to a minimium. Beryl effects are much more aggresive and very noticable. Beryl does not add any productivity value to the computer but it makes it look much nicer.

Beryl runs well on my laptop and other slower CPU machines. Most of the processing is done on the video card instead of the processor so it does not pull resources away from the CPU. There are many demo videos on YouTube showing Beryl. Here is a good one that shows many of the effects.

The only issue I have been having with Beryl is that it does not yet support two monitors. My main workstation has two monitors and anytime I enable Beryl on it, I get unpredictable results. Every time it is unusable. I typically have to log in on a terminal and kill any Beryl related process to make my desktop usable again. Other than that it works great and I recommend you try it out.

Here is a link to the install guide for Beryl on Gentoo.

I have been running the Notes 8 beta since the day after its release.  The released beta is running Lotus Notes on top of eclipse.  This has given the UI a great and much needed face lift.  Most people I know that dislike Notes don’t like the UI.  I think they will be very satisfied with Notes 8 when it is released.  I like that they integrated the Sametime client 7.5.1 and an RSS reader as well.

The upgrade is easily done by running the installer.  Once it is upgraded I recommend you upgrade the design of your mail file to DWA 8.  Make sure you ask your Notes admin to make sure he doesn’t mind you changing your mail file design.

The performance is poor however IBM has noted that nothing has been done for performance tuning in the beta.  I would not recommend anyone run the beta without at least 1 Gigabyte of RAM.  I hope they are able to make it work on computers with 512 Megabytes.  I have noticed some of the UI widgets don’t always operate consistently and my designer client doesn’t load at all.  It has also been randomly crashing about once a week.  I was a little surprised with the number of bugs in an IBM beta however, I believe they were under great pressure to release this ASAP so customers could start playing with it.

Overall I think the next version will be a great upgrade and I look forward to it.

While attending last months COLUG meeting a guy demonstrated how to fix computer fans that have died or are dying. This evening I happened to walk by a couple of my old Linux boxes and noticed a loud noise coming from one of them. I found the one making all the noise. It was the CPU fan of my Asterisk server. After additional inspection I found that the motherboard’s north bridge controller fan was not spinning. I remembered the instructions given at the meeting to fix the broken fans so I attempted a repair.

This process will fix fans that are moving slow or not at all. This issue is called a dry bearing and the process to repair is as follows. First, peel back at least 70% of the label on the center of the fan. You should see the center pin of the fan. It is common to see a rubber plug under the label. If this is the case, use something to pry it out so you have access to the center pin. Next get a paper clip and some sewing oil. Place one drop of oil on the paper clip. Using the paper clip to guide the drop directly onto the center pin. Next, rotate the fan blades in its natural direction for a minute or two without tipping the fan in any direction. You should notice it getting easier and easier to spin. That is because the oil is working its way down the center pin. Next put the label and plug back on. This is important because the label may be the only thing keeping the oil in.

I attempted to fix the noisy CPU fan first. However after attempting to remove the seal from both sides, I was unable to get access to the center pin. There was solid plastic with no easy way to remove it. Luckily I had told my friend, Ryan, about the problem and he had brought over an extra fan that fit. So I then moved on to the next fan. The procedure worked great and the improvement in resistance was very noticeable. I put the computer back together and my phone switch was back up and running.

Some people at the COLUG meeting criticized the man for being so cheap that he won’t buy a new fan and why waste time on such a cheap part. He replied saying that it is not always a matter of saving money but convenience. Sometimes when a server goes down in the middle of the night you don’t always have spare parts or local supply stores that are open. Well today I was in a similar situation. My wife was not thrilled that all the phones in the house were down because the Asterisk server wasn’t running. It was pretty late and I might not have been able to make it to Best Buy before they closed and they are not known for carrying a decent supply of fans. By lubricating one of the fans, I was able to save a trip.

After repairing that computer I decided to check some of my other computers. I noticed that my web server’s power supply fan was not moving either. It seems like I need to do more regular checking for faults on all my hardware. I took apart the power supply and performed the same process on that fan. Just as I was done fixing the fan, my wife noticed that one of the capacitors was bulging and very discolored on the power supply. We agreed that the power supply should not continue to be used and will need replaced. However, I had to plug it in one final time to learn if I had fixed the fan, and it ran fine!

I would like to thank the man that did that presentation at the last meeting. I feel bad that I didn’t catch his name to give him credit for this information and I don’t see it posted on the group’s website.

I have been having audio issues with my Insight HD channels for a while. I have tried different cables and inputs on my receiver but the problem always remained. Last week someone reminded me about the AVS forums. The AVS forums are a place were A/V experts go to talk about all types of audio/video equipment and help resolve other people’s problems. Today I gathered up all the information on my equipment, wrote up a description of the problem and posted it. I am hoping someone suggests some answers since I don’t know what else to try.