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MCE hardware error finally resolved

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My KDE Neon crashes intermittently for the past 2 years without a clear pattern or trigger. I suppose the only hint was that it often (not always) happens when I was using graphic intensive software, such as video player or remote desktop. But also happens during a cold boot up, or when the monitors wake up from sleep. It’s mostly unpredictable.

What made the diagnosis confusing is the kernel log mostly shows error like this:

GPU passthrough via VFIO

Tue, 03 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A retrospective note of a multi-weekend project from October 2021 - Feb 2022.

Background

I always needed both Windows and Linux operating systems for various reasons since the beginning of University.

GNU/Linux offers tiling window managers, theming, native Emacs support, and a wonderful ecosystem of terminals, providing comfortable developement environments. It’s not the most polished place when you first install it, but you can pretty much customize it to look like anything you want. The only downside is gaming (as of 2021, although Proton is changing the field rapidly) and it’s limited integration with popular commercial and academic software.

Kernel choices on Ubuntu LTS

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 01:40:00 +1300

With my newly built dev machine, rocking an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and AMD 5700XT, the current LTS kernel (20.04 - Focal Fossa) from Ubuntu has very limited support, such as the occasional GPU freeze / tear / flickering, bios reporting EDAC memory issues etc. One major issue I don’t need worry this time is graphics drivers, because AMD GPU drivers are integrated into the kernel already. So the only hurdle is to upgrade the kernel (and the BIOS/UEFI).

How I settled with KDE Neon, for now…

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 01:26:00 +1300

Recently I discovered KDE Neon, a GNU/Linux distro based on Ubuntu LTS but with the bleeding-edge KDE plasma.

How to fix VS Code remote SSH for NixOS target

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 01:55:00 +1300

When you install VS Code with its remote-SSH plugin, and logs into a shell via SSH. VS Code will install its backend on the remote machine (at ~/.vscode-server) and turns the client into a front-end (after all, it’s just an Electron app).

How to enable emacs-like keybindings for XFCE

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 18:16:00 +1300

Go to Settings → Settings Editor
Find xsettings → Gtk → KeyThemeName
Change the property value to “Emacs”

Short notes on function closure

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 00:45:00 +1300

The concept of closure may seem deceivingly easy to grasp – just a function that returns another function which could access the parent function’s environment.

The importance of personal webspace

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 17:31:00 +1300

I’ve just came across this article Into the personal-website-verse. It made a few points along with my comments:

Building a custom static website

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +1300

I’ve been thinking of setting up a technical blog for quite some time now and I understand there are many options available online. None of them clicked for me however for various reasons:

Short notes on radiology and AI

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 23:20:00 +1300

There’s heated discussion on the impact of AI tools (or machine learning to be more accurate) on radiology. Here’s a points I summarised from various conferences and readings on the internet.