HP Laserjet 1320 laser printer front panel
May 5, 2024

Adding an HP Laserjet 1320 as a shared network printer in Xubuntu

Switching Printers at Home Other than running out of toner, there was nothing wrong with the HP Laserjet P1102w printer we have at home. The printer printed cleanly, was compact, and was connected to our wireless network, so any machine on our network could print to it. In fact, I was planning on buying more toner this evening after we did our usual scouring of thrift shops. I thought there…

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January 23, 2024

Early Core i-Series System performance benchmarks

Introduction At the start of the pandemic I started to see a lot of videos on the topic of buying older hardware, and how old hardware is sometimes more performant for the money spent, than new hardware. In 2024 this is less true, with processors like the Ryzen 5 5500, which isn’t a great processor compared to a lot of the processors currently on the market, but blows away even…

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Desktop captured by OBS
December 20, 2023

OBS Studio records static desktop image, no movement – Xubuntu Linux

OBS is awesome Open Broadcasting Software, also known as OBS Studio, is an awesome piece of free and open source software that lets you capture audio and video from a wide variety of sources: screen capture, webcam, audio capture from the system, from an external source, from static images, slide shows, etc. It’s been awhile since I’ve used OBS to capture the desktop of one of the systems at work,…

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Partial Steam game list under Xubuntu

How well does game X work under Xubuntu? This was the thought I had when I started collecting games under Steam. The following is a partial list of games I own. Most of the games on this list are under 2 GB (with a few exceptions like Grim Dawn). This is only a partial list as I don’t actually have enough space to install all the games I own, and…

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Cheese webcam software
December 12, 2023

Cheese removed from Computer Recycling Xubuntu installations

What is Cheese? Cheese is a picture-taking program for computers with webcams built-in (laptops) or attached (external via USB). Cheese is also capable of recording small videos (for larger videos, a program like Open Broadcasting System, OBS, is recommended). Designed as a simple program, Cheese has a few extra features, such as the ability to add various effects on top of the image (Hulk, for example). Cheese also features a…

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November 2, 2023

My process for updating Discord on Xubuntu Linux

Great and a pain Discord is one of those programs I love to hate. I like Discord because it’s a good way for people to connect with me about Computer Recycling, and I find it really handy for connecting with people about Game Development and Game Jams. But the process for updating Discord on Linux isn’t good. Normally, I update most software on my system by opening a terminal (Windows…

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September 8, 2023

Squishy and the Fishes – Linux Game Development

Introduction I’ve previously written about the state of game development on Linux. While Unity, Unreal, Gamemaker, Godot, and a slew of other tools exist for Linux, it’s pretty rare to see someone actually completely developing a game using only open source tools. When I created Fasteroids, I used Gamemaker on Windows, but a lot of the other tools I used were free and open source tools that were available under…

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Knights of Pen & Paper II title screen
August 15, 2023

Knights of Pen & Paper II

A dice game with a sense of humour If games like Torchlight II, Diablo III, and Grim Dawn are your thing, Knights of Pen & Paper II will seem like a snooze-fest to you. While Knights has elements of a role playing game, it’s not an “Action” role playing game (ARPG), but more mimics the kind of play you might get from playing Dungeons and Dragons with a game master.…

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A list of git commits for Fasteroids
August 8, 2023

Fasteroids – August Update – Bugfixes

Silence? Back on July 7th I wrote about Fasteroids, the game I developed a few years ago. In that post I mentioned that I had some significant changes in mind for a new version. Then I went silent for a bit on social media about the game. This is an update about what’s going on with Fasteroids. Bumps along the way When I last wrote about Fasteroids the main thing…

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