Archives 2017

[Update] Second level/RMA support just reversed their decision. I'm afraid I was rather impolite in my email response to their decision.

So the saga so far:

• Dell laptop 3 months past 1 year warranty
• Battery starts swelling/eploding while on trip in Italy
• Turns out it is a "feature" of the XPS laptops as seen in ...

So one of the things I've been working on recently is creating a docker-based container to host a complex application for video processing that requires a lot of OS-level setup. I, of course, work on a number of Ubuntu 17.04 machines for development, and docker there has proven to be exactly what you expect. You ...

The use case here is capturing a network input source (mpeg ts stream) and then using that capture for playback later. If you just use a filesrc your playback will run as fast as the machine can process it unless you've got an element in the pipeline that will limit the speed (such as a ...

Update: The battery in this machine started swelling/exploding at 1.25 years, do not order one!

So I finally got a replacement for the old laptop, which works, but is winding up out-of-RAM basically all the time. This time, instead of going for the cheap inspirons I decided to plunk for a higher-end machine that ...

Update: the battery in this machine started swelling/exploding at 1.25 years Strongly recommend not buying one!

So I've now had a Dell XPS 15 9550 as my primary driver for approximately 9 months. I covered the (painful) setup process a bit when I first got it, so I won't repeat most of that here. Suffice ...

So I guess it's necessary that I write this up, as my previous reviews of this laptop were relatively positive, despite the PITA-ish ness of using it with Linux and the coil-whine of the power supply, and the latest issue makes it a "stay the hell away" recommendation.

Background:

A few months ago ...