Remember the Piano Man from a few months ago? Washed up on a beach near Kent and put in hospital for a while? Played the piano? Didn't talk? You know the one.
Well, he's made it back into the news of late. Apparently the health service are considering suing him, as some people think he was faking. Which means that Mikey H may have been right when he wrote this back when it first made the news. His lawyers say he wasn't faking it, and apparently he'd gone through a whole lot of trouble with losing his job, coping with being gay and so on. Is it genuine? I'm sure we'll find out.
It'd kinda suck if it was a hoax. Though I guess I'm only wishing for little romantic film-esque things to happen in real life when I say that. Hmm.
I'm back from my brief holiday. I've been away for 5 days at the Soul Survivor festival. A large chunk of my readers will already know that Soul Survivor is probably the biggest Christian festival in the UK.
We were away for a week, camping in a field near Shepton Mallet. We had a great time living in our tents and cooking together. The weather was pretty good, though it did chuck it down yesterday when we were packing up, which was a pain in the neck! There were big worship meetings, seminars on Bible teaching and various other things, gigs and loads of other things from football competitions to the skate park. We all had a great time, and everyone got lots out of it, getting closer to God and learning new things.
It's pretty cool for me going to Soul Survivor, because it's like the 7th time I've been or something. I've really seen it grow and develop, and they're going from strength to strength really. It's great to see so many young people really excited about God and keen to learn. It's cool. It does make me feel a bit old when I think of the past years I've come, with different people. I remember the days when the main meetings were in the cowshed and the campsite didn't extend anywhere near as far as it does now... My, how's it's grown.
So, anyway, that was cool. I'm home now and back at work. I'm just on the 'net briefly at home to e-mail my dad the draft of a sermon that I'm giving at his church on Sunday. Exciting stuff! It's about the importance of God in the marriage relationship - quite a challenging topic to speak on when I'm only a year into my marriage. I'll let you know how that one goes. Heck, if you're very lucky I'll get a recording of the sermon, turn it into a low bitrate mp3 and you can all listen to me preach. How exciting.
Disclaimer: If you download this software from me, and wind up melting your graphics card, it's not my problem.
I've uploaded the source and an ebuild for the nvtuner package. nvtuner is a bit of software that is used to mask/unmask pixel pipelines and vertex shaders on nVidia 6800 series AGP cards. This means you can attempt to turn a 6800LE into a 6800NU/GT/U, or a 6800NU into a 6800GT/U. I can't take credit for writing the code, as someone over at guru3d was originally responsible. I've just added a bit of a bugfix (it's hacky, but my C knowledge is not up to much!) and packaged things together nicely. I've got a few ideas for other features I might add to it at some stage, if I learn enough C and get round to it, or I might just turn the code over to the guys at nvclock and let them incorporate it into the next release of their software.
Oh yeah, and I'm told it works for 6200 series cards too, though I've not got one so I can't confirm that.
Anyway. Here's some files, and for the Gentoo users, instructions on where to put them:
- nvtuner-0.05_alpha.tar.gz - the source code. Put this in your /usr/portage/distfiles directory.
- nvtuner-0.05_alpha.ebuild - put this in your portage overlay, I recommend putting it under media-video/nvtuner.
- nvtuner.conf - put this in the files directory in whichever directory you put the ebuild in.
- nvtuner.init - put this in the files directory in whichever directory you put the ebuild in. Also, this init script has a load of comments at the bottom from when I was figuring out how to do various things. I've left them in for my benefit if I come back to the code, you can all feel free to ignore them though.
- nvtuner-0.05_alpha-everything.tar.bz2 - if you don't want to faff downloading 4 files, download this and untar it in your root directory. It will put all the files in the right places, assuming your distdir is /usr/portage/distfiles and your portdir overlay is /usr/local/portage.
After that, run this command:
ebuild $place_you_put_the_ebuild digest
to create digest and manifest, then emerge the software as normal. You may need to tweak the conf and init files to your liking. I expect you will definitely need to tweak the conf file, to get the appropriate mask and PCI memory location for your system.
If anyone needs a hand figuring out the hardware masks for their system, let me know and I can give instructions on how to do it, or you may be able to get help either here at the Gentoo forums or by searching at the Guru3d forums. I might write a bit of documentation on how to figure out the mask, or I might attempt to code it into the software, but for now you'll have to figure it out yourself.
Disclaimer: Most readers will find this irrelevant and/or boring. Those coming from the Gentoo Forums are the target audience. Anyone else may as well ignore this!
Disclaimer 2: If you download this software from me, and wind up melting your graphics card, it's not my problem.
I've fixed the downloads - sorry for any inconvenience!
I've uploaded the source and an ebuild for the nvtuner package. nvtuner is a bit of software that is used to mask/unmask pixel pipelines and vertex shaders on nVidia 6800 series AGP cards. This means you can attempt to turn a 6800LE into a 6800NU/GT/U, or a 6800NU into a 6800GT/U. I can't take credit for writing the code, as someone over at guru3d was originally responsible. I've just added a bit of a bugfix (it's hacky, but my C knowledge is not up to much!) and packaged things together nicely. I've got a few ideas for other features I might add to it at some stage, if I learn enough C and get round to it, or I might just turn the code over to the guys at nvclock and let them incorporate it into the next release of their software.
Oh yeah, and I'm told it works for 6200 series cards too, though I've not got one so I can't confirm that.
Anyway. Here's some files, and for the Gentoo users, instructions on where to put them:
- nvtuner-0.05_alpha.tar.gz - the source code. Put this in your /usr/portage/distfiles directory.
- nvtuner-0.05_alpha.ebuild - put this in your portage overlay, I recommend putting it under media-video/nvtuner.
- nvtuner.conf - put this in the files directory in whichever directory you put the ebuild in.
- nvtuner.init - put this in the files directory in whichever directory you put the ebuild in. Also, this init script has a load of comments at the bottom from when I was figuring out how to do various things. I've left them in for my benefit if I come back to the code, you can all feel free to ignore them though.
- nvtuner-0.05_alpha-everything.tar.bz2 - if you don't want to faff downloading 4 files, download this and untar it in your root directory. It will put all the files in the right places, assuming your distdir is /usr/portage/distfiles and your portdir overlay is /usr/local/portage.
After that, run this command:
ebuild $place_you_put_the_ebuild digest
to create digest and manifest, then emerge the software as normal. You may need to tweak the conf and init files to your liking. I expect you will definitely need to tweak the conf file, to get the appropriate mask and PCI memory location for your system.
If anyone needs a hand figuring out the hardware masks for their system, let me know and I can give instructions on how to do it, or you may be able to get help either here at the Gentoo forums or by searching at the Guru3d forums. I might write a bit of documentation on how to figure out the mask, or I might attempt to code it into the software, but for now you'll have to figure it out yourself.
I've put up a static page about this, to prevent it falling off the end of my blog.
I've got us connected to the web at home... on dial-up. It's like being in 1999 all over again!
Anyway, I'd better go now as if I write much more I'll be up all night waiting for the post to upload.
...though my website was.
They upgraded MySQL and butchered my database accounts in the process. They were kind enough to e-mail me and tell me all about it though, so while they may have broken something, at least they told me how to fix it. I guess this is what happens when you pay £30 a year for a website. Ho hum.
So... Alison was away last week. I had to look after myself and the cat all on my own. I only overslept once during the whole week, which for me is a monumental achievement. I also managed to keep the cat fed and entertained, so that's a bonus. Pictures of her soon BTW. I even managed to cook some food for myself, which is probably the biggest miracle of all.
Anyway. Work has been heavy as we are slightly short on people and have endless jobs to get done for the start of term. So that sucks.
I'll write something more interesting when... uh... something more interesting happens to write about.
We had a little barbecue housewarming type thing last night. My sister and Ali's sister were visiting, and my brother came across from the other side of town, and a whole bunch of our friends from church came round too. As the man of the house I took on the key role in the proceedings of chief meat burner. I felt very manly as I turned those sausages, oh yes. We had just enough meat to go round which worked out nicely, and then we all had ice cream and everyone sat and chatted in our garden for a while. A very good evening all told.
So, a thank you to those of you who may be reading who bought us the barbecue for our wedding last year. It's taken us a while to get round to using it, but it is quite a splendid thing. Anything that can grill 24 big sausages and 20 burgers at once is a good thing to have as far as I'm concerned.
In other news, Chloe the kitten is doing well. She's getting very adventurous and has explored the whole house now. She's also very keen on a ball of silver foil which she likes leaping on and attacking. I'll take some pictures and post them soon, perhaps over the weekend.
I'm back in work today. I was off most of Thursday, as well as Friday and Monday. I've been very busy.
We spent Thursday and Friday packing up, and then went out in the evening with my brother. We had a chat in the pub for a while - he's doing well, but having a bit of a mare trying to find a job which sucks. After that we went to the cinema to see the new Charlie And The Chocolate Factory film. It was, in a word, brilliant. It stayed very close to the original book, which was clearly a good thing as the book itself is great. It was quite creepy and dark, and it didn't pull any punches when it came to the nasty kids being disposed of. The trio of Burton directing, Depp leading and Elfman doing the music was as strong as ever. It was a great film and highly recommended.
On Saturday we got up early to pick up a huge van and drive everything across town, which we just managed to do in time before having to return it. Alison spent forever tidying up the old house while I did more runs across town in the car. We eventually called it a day and collapsed in sleeping bags on the beds in the spare room of the new house.
Sunday kinda sucked, as I went over early to show the old landlord round the house which he took as an opportunity to criticise all the cleaning we'd done. Some of it was justified, such as the fact that I'd not got round to cleaning the oven yet. Some was rather unfair, like complaining about the recurring mark in the carpet which I suspect may be rising damp as it comes back each time you clean it. So, Alison and I had to spend hours more cleaning the oven, fridge, carpet, bath and yard. We made some effort with the shower curtain (limescale ahoy! I defy you to shift it, even with Cillit Bang!) and the windows (I see the streaks as vindication of my choosing a career in anything but window cleaning). Anyway. That sucked.
Monday was better. We got on with tidying the new house and in the afternoon we went and bought a kitten from an animal rescue centre. She is properly cute. She's some kind of cross, with a lot of Havana Brown in her. She's called Chloe. She's settling into the new house at the moment, and getting used to the place. She's a bit lonely as she's used to being with her two sisters, so she likes having someone around when she's exploring, otherwise she just hides in her box. When you're there with her, she's quite adventurous though, and very playful. Apparently they're a very friendly breed and like a lot of attention, so she should be fun to have around. I'll post some pictures of her when I find which box my camera is in!
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