Fine tuning Ubuntu 20.04 on Asus UX305FA laptop
Unfortunately Ubuntu doesn’t come configured perfectly out of the box for every laptop under the sun. For my laptop in particular (an Asus UX305FA) there are a few changes I’ve had to make repeatedly across multiple Ubuntu versions, so I figure it’s worthwhile to document them. Using PowerTop to improve idle power consumption. Install PowerTop […]
How fast is MD5?
I was having a conversation with some colleagues today on the topic of checksums. Someone was quoted as being able to hash a terabyte of data using MD5 in one minute. This is of course ludicrous for a single hard drive on a home computer, but I’m curious to see what it would take to […]
Shortcuts to create and verify checksums easily in terminal
Since I’ve started working in digital data preservation, I’ve thought a lot more about the importance of assuring the continued integrity of data files. We use checksum verification all the time at work, but I don’t know many people who hold their own personal data to the same standard. Is it not as significant or […]
Shortcut to mount SSHFS drives using bash functions
SSHFS is a super handy tool, but the one-liner necessary to mount a remote drive is lengthy and can be a pain to remember. If you use SSHFS regularly, you probably have a few machines that you routinely connect to and thus can benefit from taking a shortcut. On Linux (assuming you use bash) you […]
Synchronizing game saves across PCs with Dropbox
I’m not always at home when I want to do some odd-hours dungeon crawling, and it’s a pain to not be making progress because my main save file is on my desktop instead of my laptop. You’ve probably experienced a similar annoyance, and thankfully for Linux and Mac users there is a simple solution. We […]
Apply Nvidia overclock settings at startup on Linux
If you’ve tried experimented with Nvidia GPU overclocking on Linux using the nvidia-settings application, you’ll notice one pesky problem: the settings don’t stay set when you reboot. This is slightly annoying, and thankfully is easily fixed. Depending on your Linux distro, the settings can be applied at startup in one of a few ways. The […]
Game mode for dual screens on Linux
I’ve been running dual monitors on Ubuntu for a while now. It’s much nicer than a single monitor in terms of enabling higher productivity, however it can produce quirky behavior in some specific situations. One such situation occurs when trying to run a full screen game that only wants to use one monitor, yet I’ve […]