Dual Head with open source ati driver

I've been using ati's proprietary fglrx module to get a one desktop overlay across two screens, but the advent of xrandr has made this unnecessary.

Here's how to set up dual head with the radeon driver on Arch Linux.


1. Generate a basic xorg.conf
# hwd -xa
Here's mine.
2. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Add a line in the Display subsection of the Monitor section:
Virtual 2960 1050
The first number should be the sum of the horizontal resolution of each screen. For me 1680+1680+1280=2960. The second number is the height of the tallest screen. Add the line to the subsection with the associated DefaultColorDepth.

3. Manipulate the screen with xrandr

Enumerate the hardware:
# xrandr
Screen 0: ...
VGA-0 connected 1400x1050+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) ...
DVI-0 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 434mm x 270mm...

I have two physical screens, DVI-0 and VGA-0. The resolution on DVI-0 looks fine already. To get VGA-0 set up:
# xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1280x1024
# xrandr --output VGA-0 --right-of DVI-0

Possible modes are resolutions listed in the left column of the output of xrandr.


That got everything working for me. I then added the two commands to a shell script in ~/.kde/Autostart/ in order to automatically configure the screens every time kde is launched. This approach is much easier than mucking around with an xorg.conf that gets broken by every other driver update.

Keeping up with the radio

A local radio station, Jammin 105.9, often plays catchy 90s dance and break beats. When I hear something that I'd like to mix in Ableton Live, I need to catch the song title or artist. That doesn't go so well, so I wrote a php shell script to keep a list of everything the station plays.


Jammin lists their previous 10 tracks played on their website, so it's easy to scrape. The script reads the site every 30 minutes and records artist, song title, and the time played. Then it queries skreemr.com for a download url and saves the information in a file.

St. Patrick Hutto

The website for the St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hutto recently went live. They've got a respectable looking page but haven't been indexed by any major search engines yet. Hopefully this link will help them out.

The church is involved in a number of notable community activities, including Pflugerville's Deutschenfest.

DIY Slurpee

711's Slurpees are delicious. They excel all other iced drinks in taste and consistency. Here's how to make your own for fifty cents.

1. Get 2 cans of soda. HEB original cola works well and is $0.25 a can in the machine in front of the store.
2. Refrigerate one can. Pour out the other can into a cup or ice tray and put in the freezer overnight.
3. Put the frozen chunk into a blender and try to break it up a bit with a butter knife.
4. Get the refrigerated can and pour about half into the blender.
5. Blend on a high setting. You may have to stop and massage the mixture with a knife.
6. Once it looks like a slurpee, pour it into a large cup. There should be a surprising increase in volume. Again, use a spoon to scoop out the globs that won't slide on their own.
7. Drink it with a straw. Stir as needed to get tasty slurps of "wet" slush.