September 30th, 2016

Breadcrumb NavXT 5.5.2

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

This is the second, and hopefully last, bug fix release of the 5.5 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT. One bug was fixed in this release. Breadcrumb NavXT 5.5.0 introduced a bug where the “blog breadcrumb” setting did not affect the generated breadcrumb trail.

The code that checked the blog_display setting was removed in a cleanup of bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_root() and bcn_breadcrumb_trail::find_type() in 5.5.0. This functionality has been re-implemented in 5.5.2. Additionally, as part of an ongoing effort to add automated testing for Breadcrumb NavXT, unit tests were added to capture this bug (should further changes to do_root() and find_type() cause it to reappear.

As always, you can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page. If you experience any issues with this version of Breadcrumb NavXT, please leave a comment on this post detailing the issue.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

September 21st, 2016

Notes on XPS 15 9550 Linux Support

Posted by John Havlik in Guides

Tired of waiting for a 3D XPoint based SSD to become available, I decided to grab a 512GB Intel SSD 600p for my XPS 15 9550. The intent was to switch over from Windows 10 to Linux on the 9550 while preserving the original SSD should I want to go back.

The actual SSD swap was not too difficult. A Torx T5 and small Phillips screwdriver are needed to remove the back of the 9550 and the m.2 SSD. This being my first NVMe system, I ran into a few gotchas while getting Linux installed. Though, the bulk of the issues are related to Broadcom’s poor Linux support.
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September 14th, 2016

Fixing the Onkyo TX-SR806 Receiver’s Blue in Deep Black Issue

Posted by John Havlik in Guides

This issue manifests itself as bands of blue in what should be a dark black gradient. A good example of this is the top AMD Catalyst Control Center as seen below.

AMD Catalyst Control Center Header in YCbCr 4:4:4 Mode

The above is a picture taken by a camera of a TV connected to a Onkyo TX-SR806. The graphics card was set to use the YCbCr 4:4:4 color pixel format in this instance. This causes problems for the TX-SR806 which has problems with certain dark colors, rendering them blue rather than black—directly connecting to the TV does not have this issue.

To fix this, change the color pixel format to RGB 4:4:4 mode. For AMD Radeon users, AMD Radeon Software Crimson can do this (in the drop down menu, it is called “RGB 4:4:4 Pixel Format PC Standard (Full RGB)”).

AMD Catalyst Control Center Header in RGB 4:4:4 Mode

Ignoring the moiré pattern due to the alignment of the camera, the dark area looks much better when in RGB 4:4:4 mode. Lastly, this is not an AMD specific issue. The previous HTPC which had Intel graphics also exhibited the same behavior.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

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