digiKam and memory

After working on 27 photos the memory consumed by digiKam 1.2  is currently at 1 560 268 kB (as reported by KDE System Activity under Memory column).
This is reported when no photo is edited at the moment.
Things start to slow down - and the computer starts to use a page file.
I've restarted the application and displayed the same photo - now the memory consumption is 160 404 kilobytes.
Looks like some bad memory leaks to me.

Red eye correction in digiKam

Hmm.. I can't seem to find a Red Eye Correction in my digiKam 1.2.
Is this a bug 234545 or am I simply blind?

Ubuntu - a problem with two souncards

So I got a brand spanking new Kubuntu 10.04 installed on my desktop PC.
After a few days I noticed I have some intermittent problems with sound - sometimes Youtube videos were mute and sometimes everything was OK. Tried to reinstall flash plugin but there was no change.
I figured out there might be a problem with two sound cards in my machine.
I have an on-board Intel HDA sound card and a PCI Creative X-Fi Fatality. During the start of the system - in some cases the primary card was X-Fi and in other cases it was HDA.
Since for quite some time X-Fi drivers work in Ubuntu out-of-the-box then HDA audio was redundant.
How to disable it from Ubuntu (I could  probably have done it from BIOS)?
First - list soundcards in your system (in terminal):
more /proc/asound/modules


the output I got was:

0 snd_hda_intel

1 snd_ctxfi

How to get rid of HDA?

You have to edit the file: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

In my case - I press: Alt + F2 and enter kdesu kate in the command prompt.
I opened the aforementioned blacklist.conf file and added the following line at the end:
 # Disable onboard HDA audio
blacklist snd_hda_intel

Save, restart, back to the terminal:
more /proc/asound/modules

0 snd_ctxfi

Success?

2010-04-17 Mt Usher Gardens

digiKam and Vignetting tool

The new Vignetting tool in digiKam is really cool but I have some issues with it.
The most irritating one is the fact that digiKam not only adds a dark oval around the image - but also lightens the centre of the image.
See below:
Unmodified - (PNG):

With Added Vignette (PNG):

See the nose?
It's much lighter. How much exactly?
I loaded both photos to the GIMP and measured the colour of the same pixel.

Pixel coordinates: X: 235 , Y: 351
ORIGINAL: 
Colour: Red: 197, Green: 191, Blue: 198

VIGNETTE ADDED IN:
Colour: Red: 234, Green: 227, Blue: 236

30+ Awesome Free and Open Source Audio Applications List

http://open-tube.com/15-awesome-free-and-open-source-audio-applications-list

Ubuntu Tweak

Any Ubuntu fans out there?
There's a nice little utility that can make your life a bit easier.
http://my.opera.com/ubuntunerd1/blog/h-4

Artificially sweetened drinks kill you slowly

Found on Internets:

A diet high in salt or artificially sweetened drinks increases the risk of kidney function decline, two studies show.

The researchers found an association between two or more servings per day of artificially sweetened soda and a two-fold increased risk of faster kidney function decline. There was no connection between sugar-sweetened beverages and kidney function decline.

more:
http://www.empowher.com/news/2009/11/02/diet-soda-sodium-tied-kidney-trouble-studies

Rise from the dead

Hello,
I think it's time to revive this old blog of mine!