September 2020 – Ian's notes

Dotfiles

I use a set of common Linux tools for day-to-day sysadmin and computer use, and these can all be configured using dotfiles. Here’s a commented listing of each program’s file:

Monitoring thermal throttling

Thermal throttling of a CPU is visible as a reduction in clock speed under load, and is easiest to notice while monitoring both core temperature and clock speed simultaneously.

The following command displays the near real-time clock speed of all the CPU cores, updated every second¹:

Monitoring ADSL traffic on my ASUS DSL-AC52U router

This post assumes that you have SSH access configured on the router.

CSS accommodations for dark mode

Adding dark mode to a style sheet involves adding a media query to detect the user’s preference:

A web development checklist

These are the tools I use to establish a baseline of usability for the websites I develop:

Running my ADSL router on a 5V USB power bank during load shedding

Most ADSL routers make use of 12V power supplies, providing around 1-1.5A. It’s important to note, though, that this takes into account running the router at maximum capacity on all ports and antennas and supplying power to an external device such as a hard drive. This means that, in practice, routers use considerably less power than the power supply is rated for. I took advantage of this to run my router off of a 5V 2.1A power bank USB port. You can also run this solution off of a laptop USB port.

Retro scrollbars for Ubuntu (GTK3) programs, such as Firefox

Most modern applications have followed the trend of resizing scrollbars to the point of invisibility. To fix this for Firefox and other GTK3 programs, do the following:

Prevent Dota 2 from constraining the cursor to the game window

Dota 2, by default, constrains the mouse cursor to the game window. To disable this behaviour, do the following: