The problem for users of Windows laptops using the Conexant audio driver that makes Conexant's Flow.exe program eat large amounts of CPU when the Firefox web browser is running has not been solved by "conventional" means.

And in order to be part of the "solution," should one ever come, I filed a bug with Mozilla on the issue.

There have been many fixes proposed for this problem, which only seems to manifest itself on my HP Envy laptop while running Firefox. You hear the fan rev up almost immediately and then can see both Firefox and Flow.exe climb in the amount of CPU they are taking, combining for a total of about 60% on my laptop.

This has been going on for many months, and a couple of days ago I got tired of being forced to run Chrome. It's not right that I can't use the privacy-loving Firefox on my Windows 10 laptop.

So I went back to one of the "fixes" that works:

To keep Flow.exe from running constantly and stealing excessive CPU while you are using Firefox or any other program, just change the name Flow.exe to something like _Flow.exe (I just added an underscore) so the Conexant audio system can no longer "find" it. Trust me, sound works fine without it. Why it's there at all is a mystery.

You can find Flow.exe in this folder: C:\Program Files\CONEXANT\Flow. Just rename Flow.exe as _Flow.exe (or whatever you want; changing its name is enough to keep it from running). I'm not sure whether or not you need to reboot after this, but it couldn't hurt.

Once you rename Flow.exe, You will get a popup every time you restart the PC warning you that you need to reinstall your Conexant audio software because Flow.exe is missing. Ignore this nagging box. I'd like to send Conexant a few popups, or maybe I should send my good wishes to Logitech, the company that bought Conexant a few years ago. Both are garbage. They're certainly not seeing what I'm saying about them on Twitter and consequently falling all over me to fix anything. No, it's radio silence. F&^% 'em.

As long as I've been using Unison, I've been running version 2.40 because that's the newest package I can get for CentOS 6, which is the Linux system that my current shared host runs.

The first thing you learn about using Unison to synchronize files on a server and a number of desktops, is that Unison likes to see the same version on both sides of the "transaction." If you have different versions of Unison, or even the same version compiled with a different version of Ocaml, it's probably not going to work.

I haven't even figured out how to sync from Windows to Linux with the same Unison version on both sides. It probably has something to do with Unix file permissions vs. Windows file permissions.

But from Linux to Linux, you need the same Unison, compiled with the same Ocaml, on both sides. Even in Fedora 30, the project doesn't package "newer" than Unison 2.40, so that's what I run locally.

See if you can wrap your head around this: Forward-thinking Fedora packages Unison 2.40, but Debian and Ubuntu have been packaging 2.48. And the current "stable" version of Unison is 2.51, which seemingly nobody packages anywhere.

But NearlyFreeSpeech.net offers Unison 2.51, which the admins likely built from ports for their FreeBSD infrastructure. Even OpenBSD offers Unison 2.51, and you can get it with a binary package.

Let me tl;dr this: I downloaded the source for Unison 2.51, untarred it in my Windows 10 WSL (which is running Ubuntu 16.04), used apt to install Ocaml, untarred the Unison sources and used make UISTYLE=text to compile it. Then I had to make a .prf configuration file for the new site (building off my old .prf) and play around until I got it right. It worked, and now that I can successfully use Unison to sync between the Ubuntu 16.04 WSL in Windows and NFSN's FreeBSD system, I am free to move my Ode sites over there.

Why do I use Unison? Ode's has an extension that allows the server to put its own timestamps on post files after they are uploaded, so if I only pushed one way, say using rsync, the local files wouldn't have the timestamps that are on the server versions. Unison checks in both directions for file changes and reconciles them. Git is another way to do this, and it's something I might explore in the future, though I'm more interested in syncing the two filesystems than I am in version control, and that's why I decided to use Unison in the first place.

I'm thinking of giving up on /blog: I originally set up this blog with a /blog subdirectory because I couldn't figure out how to make the /cgi-bin/ode.cgi part of the URL "disappear" via Apache's .htaccess any other way. Since then, I have figured out how to do that, and I might either dedicate http://stevenrosenberg.net to this blog, or more likely put it on a subdomain like blog.stevenrosenberg.net. That MIGHT mean breaking the Disqus comments, but I could probably save them. Even so, I've been thinking about giving up on outside-hosted comments and instead creating links to Reddit to allow for discussion of entries on this blog.

Changing the URL could break all the old links. I could set up redirects in the Apache configuration, or I could just let it go. Or I might keep the old URL along with /blog.

Is Stanley Jordan's two-handed tapping of the electric guitar a gimmick, or a portal to another kind of musical expression? I'm going with the last answer, and looking at this video of him playing the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" in 2015, I think he sounds better now than he did in his '80s heyday.

Part of what I'm responding to here is that his tone is so good. I'm guessing it's a combination of technique, musicality and better gear, but his time is excellent, and the way he works his way in and out of the tune is really worth watching:

Here he is playing the same tune in the 1980s:

Stanley Jordan is on tour right now, and the easiest way to keep up with him is via Facebook. I say this because his website is "under maintenance."

The playing is great, but the guitars sound so good. Often an archtop acoustic can sound a bit harsh, but I think the key here is that they are both using a light touch. I love the "woodiness" in these instruments. The sound of the '30s L-5 being played by Serge Merlaud on the right is exactly what I like:

Normally I would just microblog a link like this, but in this case I want to give myself a better chance of remembering it.

My beautiful Linux development environment by Deepu K Sasidharan on https://dev.to goes into detail about both hardware and software, and the tips on how to configure Fedora 30 with GNOME are very good, especially because many developers take unusual pride in their minimalist, non-mainstream window manager choices.

The tips on GNOME theming, Extensions and icon sets are particularly welcome. Deepu's other interesting choices include ZSH instead of Bash (I'm not sure if this has anything to do with macOS' shell switch, but I think it predates it), the Tilix terminal, which allows for easy window splits.

Deepu's tips include the Timeshift backup utility, which I'd never heard of. It's like Apple's Time Machine, but for Linux, and it's something I want to take a look at.

Thanks, Deepu.