The Ulterior Zone

No Trust to X

2012-01-19T12:08:00.000+04:00

Ctrl+Alt+<Keypad *> - this is all you need nowadays to bypass screen lockers in X Server. Although, I believe, this flaw will be fixed pretty soon, the trust is lost for ever, and I'm going back to roots by switching to X-independent "vlock".

"sudo vlock -na" works even when called from X, and seems to be the most secure way to lock your machine, since virtual consoles are handled as well.
(Make sure you remember root password before executing the above command.)

Shell Poetry

2011-03-17T17:15:00.000+03:00

If in script.sh you want to

echo err >/dev/stderr

then you should

echo err >>/dev/stderr

unless you plan to catch

only the last message

when running

script.sh 2>err.log

Forget all the above,

despite it works in many cases.

In fact, the only correct form is

echo err 1>&2

Beyond Brightness and Contrast

2007-07-22T20:07:00.000+04:00

When you occasionally open advanced display properties on your PC you might notice there is a tab for controlling gamma parameters. I was always curious why gamma controls might be required and more importantly how to use them properly. Despite this fact I never had enough courage to get my teeth into the topic until today...

Leaving aside a boring story of what finally pushed me beyond brightness and contrast monitor controls I just want to promote an excellent tutorial by Norman Koren on monitor calibration and gamma.

Linux users might want to start with Monitor calibration under X article at linux.com which originally led me to the Norman's site.