the cosmotron » Random

Samsung LN32A450 HDMI Calibration Failure

Ryan Lewis — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:36:34 +0000

If your LN32A450 ever reports an HDMI calibration failure, here are the steps to fix it when hooked up to a computer via an HDMI port:

Download an 8×8 checkerboard patter, such as this one.
Make sure your computer’s resolution is set to 1360×768; its native resolution.
View the image in full screen (so that only it’s being displayed on screen and nothing else).
Recalibrate.

The TV should now report a successful calibration.

Note: There are no guarantees, I am not responsible for any damage, and the warranty of your TV is taken into your own hands when performing this ritual.

Firefox, Ubuntu, and Spell Checking

Ryan Lewis — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:45:17 +0000

I just noticed that my version of Firefox 3.0.8 running in Ubuntu 8.10 had en_AU as it’s default spell checking dictionary. Is this true for anyone else?

The only reason I noticed this was because Firefox was marking words such as “organization” and “enrollment” as being spelled wrong.

If anyone wants to look at their current setting, open about:config and search for the key “spellchecker.dictionary”.

Every time you send useless email…

Ryan Lewis — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:02:04 +0000

Please don’t send useless email to the lists…

Samsung LN32A450, nVidia Drivers, and Ubuntu

Ryan Lewis — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:43:08 +0000

I just recently purchased a Samsung LN32A450 television and wanted to use it as a monitor. I figured that it shouldn’t be too hard, just plug in my computer to it’s VGA port and then change the resolution.

But, when are new things ever easy?

To make a long story short, I had to generate a custom modeline for X to be able to use the TV’s native resolution, 1360×768. I read to use the command cvt 1360 768 60.015Hz, but the returned modeline resulted in a “Mode Not Supported” error from the TV. Instead, I had to use a Windows program called PowerStrip to grab the custom timings that actually worked. Though, the only reason they worked was by luck because Windows didn’t properly detect the monitor either, so I used PowerStrip to add a custom resolution to my registry which was preset with working timings.

Anyway, PowerStrip was nice enough to generate an xorg.conf modeline for me and had to edit the following in my file (this is assuming that you already have the proprietary nVidia drivers already working):

…

Section "Monitor"
    …
    Modeline "1360x768" 85.500 1360 1440 1552 1792 768 771 777 795 +hsync +vsync
EndSection

…

Section "Screen"
    …
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth  24
        Virtual 1360 768
        Modes "1360x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

…

Note: any ellipses (…) in the above are just cutting out parts that were not changed in my file.

UPDATE: I figured that I would make a note that I recently tried getting a new computer to work with this television and didn’t have as much luck. The new computer was using an ATI Radeon 4850 rather than the nVidia card that I got working previously. Ultimately, I couldn’t get the VGA out to work and had to switch to using an HDMI connection. After I did that, Ubuntu 8.10 (the same OS that I was using previously) automatically detected the native resolution of this TV. Therefore, I recommend using HDMI over VGA to get this TV to work in Linux.

Running Xen

Ryan Lewis — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:45:42 +0000

Congrats to the authors of Running Xen for making it to the front page of Slashdot!

GPLv3 Release Date Announced

Ryan Lewis — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:33:06 +0000

According to an announcement on the info-member GNU mailing list, the GPL version 3 will be released on June 29th at noon (EDT). A live stream of the event will be broadcast on the Free Software Foundation‘s website.

My Very Own Integer

Ryan Lewis — Wed, 09 May 2007 06:02:30 +0000

In light of the recent AACS key controversies, Ed Felten over at Freedom to Tinker wrote an article poking fun at the whole situation.

Anyway, I would like to let everyone know that I am the proud and sole owner of the following 128-bit int:

68 8E 72 BA D3 7F 58 6E 3D 67 F9 68 DA 18 A8 90

This Just In

Ryan Lewis — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 04:09:28 +0000

Saddam Hussein is dead. He was hanged Saturday for crimes committed in a brutal crackdown during his reign.

Finally and good riddance…

Water on Mars

Ryan Lewis — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:44:17 +0000

According to an article at NASA, there seems to be evidence of water flowing “occasionally” over on the surface of the red planet. Finally, it seems that all this money being spent on Mars is starting to pay off!

What do we have here?

Ryan Lewis — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 06:21:41 +0000

The interesting part is highlighted in yellow…