Thanks to @Notkimusic for the powerful song in Ukrainian. We needed this song in English too, so here’s a translation. I prayed over every phrase for God to give me the wisdom in translating it.
I don’t know how You could love us all so much to give Your life for us, to you I bow. I don’t know how You alone endured the cross so we forever could be living now.
Je-e-sus, how many times can I Confess my heart: You know I love You, Lord. You are king, the Lord of all my life. I am for you each moment I’m alive.
I don’t know why some don’t trust in the Word of our God, who’s powerful to draw us near. I’m so happy to have found the narrow path to Him my faith will surely bring me there.
Danse Etoile (DE) is the ballet school where I dance at. I originally wrote this article here for the DE magazine that Marie-Jose published in June 2025 for the dancer families, but I hope it’s a useful reading for others who are on the web here as well.
Photos are of the ballet Frida’s Wings where I danced the role of Diego Rivera. The ballet featured Frida Kahlo and her “wings”.
What mechanism motivates us to keep going in life when we face difficulty? The ballet Frida’s Wings demonstrated what kept Frida going: her wings! Despite a bus wreck that crumbled her life, she found the power in her wings to overcome the difficulties. While the ballet portrayed Frida, this ballet was actually about us. We all have different kinds of wings in our life, and, if we examine the ballet as well as our life closely, we will be empowered to have true success.
Wings (danced by Kathryn Maciolek) was the main character of the ballet. Wings was Frida’s strong spirit that drove her to create all the art that she had created. In fact, we all have this type of “wings” in our lives to allow us to create. God gave this gift of artistry to humanity from the very beginning when He placed the first humans into a garden for them to create beautiful landscapes from it. Further, as John Keating put it, medicine, business, engineering, etc., are all necessary for us humans to stay alive, but art is “what we stay alive for”. Art gives us purpose. Art makes us human. In this way, because art is intrinsic to all humanity, we therefore can be sure that if Frida had wings, then we can have wings too!
But beware of counterfeit wings. For Frida (danced by Rika Hancock), Diego was the counterfeit wings not because his professional opinion was wrong but because he ended up mistreating Frida. He didn’t really love her. According to Frida’s biography by Hayden Herrera, Frida initially went to Diego to consult him – as he was a professional painter – about the profitability of her art to see if she should keep painting or if it’s not worth it. She needed to make a living. His honest opinion empowered her to keep painting, but the problem was that he married and later mistreated her. It was good that she consulted a professional artist, but marrying him was the wrong decision. For me, Diego was a difficult role to dance because I really care about everyone I dance with and hate to mistreat anyone. It was emotionally painful to dance the fight scene with Frida. Despite the challenge, Diego was an important role to showcase Frida’s art and to further showcase her wings.
As for our lives, we can have those counterfeit wings too. Social media is one example. It can help us achieve popularity to sell artwork to more people or to expand our business or to influence more people in positive ways. However, just like with Frida’s case of good wings that had become counterfeit because she married the wrong person, it is important to use social media wisely and not “marry” it – that is, not be addicted to it, not overshare our life to the world, and to do our best to not rely on the number of “likes” we have. Furthermore, social media is overly stimulating to our brain, and excessive use has been linked to a variety of mental health problems. If misused, this “wings” of social media can become counterfeit and work against us. Why do we need counterfeit wings when we have the real wings within us?
Picture credit: Dominique Payannet, 2024. The ballet: Frida’s Wings.
Danse Etoile (DE) is the ballet school where I dance at. I originally wrote this article here for the DE magazine that Marie-Jose published in June 2024 for the dancer families, but I hope it’s a useful reading for others who are on the web here as well.
Photos are of the Little Mermaid ballet where I danced the role of the Prince.
Danse Etoile (DE) is very special to me because I know that it is not about me: it is about us. There is so much other work that I can spend my time on throughout the week, and I spend my time on engineering and other tasks when I’m not at the studio. However, there is absolutely nothing that I can do that is as important as the people whom I am with. DE involves people in three ways: first, by the influence that everyone has on everyone else; second, by the audience satisfaction that arises from this; and third, by the collective strength that we have when we’re together.
In any group scenario, such as a dance studio, the people have an influence on each other, whether that influence be good or bad. I am a person of faith, and I believe that God placed me into this world to love and to positively influence other people as well as to learn from other people. I believe this to be my purpose in life. With that in mind, DE allows me to live out my life purpose not only by doing whatever I can to make other dancers happy when I’m in class but also by dancing the best I can to make the audience happy when I’m on stage. Likewise, everyone in class influences me in positive ways as well, and this makes DE a very special place.
Secondly, audience satisfaction at DE is really important. If one watches a DE performance, there is no doubt about the arduous work that went into the show. But it’s not even about appreciating the arduous work: it’s about the dancers giving the audience a gift, a performance, a good time. It’s about us doing our best job for ourselves and for the audience. My first time watching a DE performance was the Wizard of Oz, and I was blown away by the performance. Not only did all the dancers do an excellent job, but also they were all deeply situated in their roles, filled with emotion, and they made the story feel very real to me. It felt as though I was right there in the scene with them. I felt very happy. They gave me a good time. This experience influenced me in such a way that I wanted to work hard and to be a part of these performances.
Finally, dancing together at DE, we are collectively stronger than if we were each alone doing our own separate tasks. When we do the plank and other challenging exercises in class, it’s tough, but we’re all in it together, and that makes us achieve more. Studying with Marie-Jose in class every day, I’ve improved so much. And aside from just improving, all of us are simply much happier when we all work together. Working with these people, I want all of them to succeed, and everyone wants me to succeed, and that makes us a strong company where we can feel like we belong. I am very blessed to be dancing with this wonderful group of people.
Picture credit: Dominique Payannet, 2024. “Sailors” scene in the ballet: Little Mermaid.
Note on history: just as I joined the ballet school, DE performed the Wizard of Oz show in January 2023, which I was not a part of because I had just joined. I was in the audience for that show.
There are some hoops to jump through when installing DaVinci Resolve on a Linux machine, but the freedom and power that comes with Linux makes it much worthwhile! I’ve built myself a custom computer for 4K video editing, and I was able to install the BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve Studio 20 on it on top of AlmaLinux 10. Due to how much effort it takes to make it work, I wanted to help others by sharing how I was able to do this.
DISCLAIMER: this article is provided in the hope that it should be useful. However, NO WARRANTY is made whatsoever. The author (Ruvim) is not liable for any consequence. Please PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Photo: my PC build so far. I plan to still add an optical disk drive and an SD card reader into the two external drive bays, but otherwise it’s finished.
(Note: I don’t earn any commission for the above link; I’m not that fancy yet, lol.)
Plasma workspace (optional)
First of all, I hate the new GNOME UI – it’s so difficult to work with. My first step was to install the KDE Plasma workspace, which can be done by opening a terminal, entering root, and running the appropriate commands:
Once it reboots, select “Plasma” as the workspace (gear icon on the lower-right of the screen) after clicking on the username but BEFORE typing the password to log in.
Some GUI settings
Some settings to keep in mind that I used, but you may or may not need – just a reminder list of items to consider:
Mouse & Touchpad – ensure the scrolling direction is the way you’d like (for me, I had to reverse it to scroll the right way).
Bluetooth – if pairing mouse/keyboard, click on “Configure” on the top-right, and ensure the radio button is set to “On login: Enable Bluetooth” so that it doesn’t turn off Bluetooth randomly when you log in the next time.
Screen Locking: Lock screen automatically: Never.
Power Management:
When inactive: do nothing.
Dim automatically: never.
Turn off screen: never.
The power settings are perhaps useful to avoid problems with the GPU powering down when the monitor turns off. More on this later, but I’m still figuring out how to resolve that. For now, I’ve figured out how to make it work *without* the monitor ever turning off, and as soon as the monitor turns off, the system powers down the GPU and doesn’t power it back up when the monitor is turned back on again … I will update this post if I figure out a solution, but, for now, just do whatever is necessary to always keep the screen on when you’re using the GPU.
Download and install NVIDIA driver
Go to nvidia.com and download the GPU driver for Linux 64-bit. Be sure you do NOT select “aarch64” as that is for the ARM chip. What we want is just the regular AMD or Intel x86_64 (“64-bit”) variant of the driver.
Next, install some prerequisites for the driver. The page here describes some of them, but I’ll describe specifically what I installed below this: https://elrepo.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start
The NVIDIA driver installer prefers that the X window server is NOT running, so I recommend:
Log out of the GUI session.
Ctrl + Alt + F3 to go to a text-only console.
Terminate the GUI (GDM), ensure any existing nvidia modules are unloaded, and install the driver.
From the text-only console (Ctrl + Alt + F3):
sudo systemctl stop gdm.service
lsmod | grep nvidia
# if there are any nvidia modules running,
# see what is using them, and unload them:
sudo rmmod nvidia_drm # etc. ...
# ***************** then to install *****************
cd ~/Downloads
chmod ugo+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-570.169.run
sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-570.169.run
Some notes on the options:
When it asks if you want to SIGN the module, YES, YOU WANT TO SIGN IT! Otherwise it won’t work with SecureBoot if it’s not signed, and you won’t be able to boot with the module.
Select: Generate New Key.
Note the path where it saves the *public* key: probably, /usr/share/nvidia/nvidia-modsign-crt-XXXXXXXX.der
It might complain about having to guess the module path of /usr/lib64/xorg/modules , but don’t worry about that warning – the X11 should find it still, just accept and continue.
If it asks to build legacy 32-bit support libraries, select yes.
If it asks to rebuild initramfs or something like that, select yes.
If it asks to run xconfig to configure xorg.conf, select NO. You can do that later after reboot.
Once the installer is done, run the mokutil in order to register the kernel module with secure boot:
It will ask you to make a password. Pick a password, and remember it: you will need this password in the BIOS the next time you boot.
At this point, reboot the computer.
Please: stay WITH the computer. The BIOS will only give you like 30 seconds to “press any key to load MOK”. If you miss the 30-second window during boot, then you’ll boot into the OS without registering the MOK, and the NVIDIA driver won’t work.
Note: to search, hit the / (slash) key, and then type something to search for, and then hit Enter. To go to the next result, hit the n (lowercase N) key. To scroll up/down, use J and K. Just the usual vim shortcuts (if you don’t know vim yet, PLEASE learn vim; it’s SO-O-O useful!).
Search system logs:
dmesg
An AlmaLinux bug on my computer (seen errors of this in the journalctl and a couple commands to run in the error output) was disallowing the nvidia driver from doing things, so I had to run:
su
cd /usr/bin
ausearch -c 'nvidia-modprobe' --raw | audit2allow -M my-nvidiamodprobe
semodule -X 300 -i my-nvidiamodprobe.pp
But be sure to LOOK in journalctl first BEFORE running this command. You must be sure that this is needed before you take these actions. That said, for me, journalctl had errors complaining of this, so I executed these commands, and those particular errors went away.
The following was what it was saying to me with this error:
The next error was this one:
The gnome-shell said: “Failed to open gpu ‘/dev/dri/card1’: DRM_CLIENT_CAP_UNIVERSAL_PLANES not supported”.
After a LOT of googling, I finally learned that the Wayland server needs a certain DRM mode that the NVIDIA driver does not default to. Here are some links that I found useful while searching for this:
Chances are, it’ll print “N” meaning it’s mode 0 which is incompatible with Wayland. To change that, create this config file:
sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
In there, type the following line:
options nvidia_drm modeset=1
The nvidia_drm is the kernel module that we’re configuring, and the modeset is the name of the parameter that we’re setting.
Save that file, and run this again:
sudo dracut --force
Once that’s done, reboot the computer again.
—
Look through journalctl to see if there are any remaining issues. For me, I think that was it. Shutting the computer down, unplugging the HDMI cable from the motherboard and plugging this HDMI cable into the GPU, and starting up the computer: seems to be working now.
Uninstalling the NVIDIA driver
Please don’t uninstall it if you’re needing to use it – this is just for future reference or if you need to re-install it – but the uninstall is the same as the install but with the uninstall flag:
The error is about resolving a symbol lookup. To fix this, you may do the following:
cd /opt/resolve/libs
su
mkdir archive
mv libgio* archive/
mv libglib* archive/
mv libgmodule* archive/
exit
After all of the above is done, DaVinci Resolve Studio should now be able to run.
GPU memory full – DaVinci Resolve
But what if you see a message like this?
For me, I installed a 16 GB RTX 1070 Ti GPU, so there’s no way just simply opening a project will fill up the memory.
In fact, here is my GPU VRAM memory usage:
This is likely due to the display is using the HDMI port on the *motherboard* instead of using the HDMI output from the video graphics card. Please check to make sure that the computer monitor is plugged into the graphics card, and not the motherboard.
The integrated graphics on the motherboard don’t have enough RAM for DaVinci Resolve to be able to render its preview output while editing. Yes, DaVinci Resolve can still *talk* to the NVIDIA GPU for doing graphics encoding, but in order to *display* the video (such as to preview it while editing), it still must send the video to whatever graphics circuit that the monitor is plugged into, and in this case, I had the monitor plugged into the motherboard which was using the integrated graphics.
To resolve this, unplug the monitor from the motherboard and plug into the graphics card instead.
GPU fan turned off?
Turn on in the nvidia-settings:
sudo nvidia-settings
Problem: turning off the monitor breaks the display
Agh … this is the part I don’t have figured out yet. It has something to do with DPMS, and the best I can say for now is: do whatever is necessary to keep the monitor TURNED ON while the computer is running.
For me currently, if I do this:
Monitor is plugged into the NVIDIA HDMI output on the graphics card.
Boot up the computer. Display works fine.
Log in. Look at my desktop.
Turn OFF the monitor.
Wait 5 seconds.
Turn ON the monitor.
And … only a black screen. No more signal from the graphics card.
Perhaps the GPU lights and fans stop spinning too.
I’ll update this post when I figure this out, but all of the above – plus just keeping the monitor on at all times – should get you going to start editing video in DaVinci Resolve on Linux.
Problem: cannot play video
Another problem that I currently am still having is that no video would play outside of DaVinci Resolve. Even in DaVinci Resolve, playing a video on the timeline is very slow and just stutters so much to be unplayable.
Scrolling through the journalctl logs, I do see these messages:
One of the messages says:
spectacle[5391]: libva_info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
spectacle[5391]: libva_info: va_openDriver() returns -1
The correct return value for a successful va_openDriver() is the value 0 (success), but instead it’s returning -1 (unknown error).
The ‘spectacle’ is the screenshot utility, but I am guessing that nvidia_drv_video is a driver specifically for playing video using the GPU. I notice that no video can play. For me, mpv does not play video – sound plays, but the video canvas is just black. Websites depend: YouTube seems to still play, but a reel on Instagram was not playing for me, but it gave me an error.
The other item of interest on here is this:
resolve[5595]: qt.qpa.plugin: Could not find the Qt platform plugin "wayland" in ""
I have yet to figure out what specifically this error message means or how to fix it, but I will update this post if I learn the answer. In the meantime, please let me know (email me) if you have any input for me on this or any clues. Thank you.
Any ideas on a screensaver to save the screen from burn-in?
LCD screens are less susceptible to burn-in than CRT or OLED screens, but, that being said, it makes me feel much more comfortable to have some sort of a screensaver. Googling this, it doesn’t seem like AlmaLinux currently supports a screensaver without first locking the device, but, thankfully, we have HTML to help us!
Create a new file like so:
vi ~/blank.html
In vim, enter paste mode (i.e., type: :set paste and hit Enter).
Copy-paste this HTML code into the file:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<title>Blank Page - No Cursor</title>
<style type="text/css">
html, body {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
color: white;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
text-align: center;
vertical-align: middle;
user-select: none;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
var cursorState = true;
var helpHtml = "";
function enterBlankScreen() {
document.body.innerHTML = "";
document.body.style.cursor = "none";
document.documentElement.requestFullscreen();
cursorState = false;
}
function exitBlankScreen() {
document.body.innerHTML = helpHtml;
document.body.style.cursor = "auto";
document.exitFullscreen()
.catch (err => {
console.log("Note: document was already not in fullscreen mode.");
})
cursorState = true;
}
function toggleScreenMode() {
if (cursorState) {
enterBlankScreen();
}
else {
exitBlankScreen();
}
}
function handleFullscreenEvent(event) {
if (document.fullscreenElement == null) {
exitBlankScreen();
}
}
function init() {
helpHtml = document.body.innerHTML;
window.addEventListener("fullscreenchange", handleFullscreenEvent);
window.addEventListener("click", toggleScreenMode);
}
</script>
</head>
<body bgColor="black" onLoad="init();">
<div style="padding: 100px;">
Click the mouse anywhere to enter blank-screen mode;
click again (or hit the Escape key) to return to normal.
</div>
</body>
</html>
For those unfamiliar with vim: hit ‘i’, and hit Shift + Insert, and hit Escape, then save and exit (:wq , then Enter).
The file should look like this:
Open the file in Firefox, and you should see this:
Use this window as a screensaver. Basically:
Click inside the window to make it go fullscreen, hide the cursor, and hide the text. You will have a COMPLETELY BLACK SCREEN.
Click again (or hit Escape) to return back to the normal mode with the text back, the cursor back, and the window not in fullscreen anymore.
This should allow to “turn off” the display without actually turning it off.
Note: please only leave your computer unlocked if you are confident about its physical security. I am not responsible for security violations or incidents that result from this. Please be responsible and don’t blame me. Thank you.
VIM and TMUX
Other useful software to install is tmux:
sudo dnf install tmux
To be more useful, tmux can be configured:
vi ~/.tmux.conf
With this tmux config:
set-option -g default-shell /bin/bash
set-window-option -g mode-keys vi
set -g mouse off
Likewise, vim can be configured:
vi ~/.vimrc
With this vim resource file:
scriptencoding utf-8
set encoding=utf-8
set autoindent
set number
set list
set listchars+=nbsp:-,tab:##
set listchars-=eol:$
set expandtab
set tabstop=4
set softtabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
filetype plugin on
syntax on
My name is Ruvim Kondratyev (pronounced: ru-VEEM kon-DRA-tyev). I live in Erie, Colorado, and I like being creative and making a difference in the community. For my job, I am a software engineer writing C++ code, but outside of work, I enjoy the arts. In my free time, I am learning ballet dance, translating songs from Ukrainian to English, doing videography for fun, and programming computers to help me and others do creative work more efficiently. I would also like to resume learning the violin, but that’s been in the backlog of things for me to do.
Here today, I wanted to also share my happiness with others. Wouldn’t it be great if all people found fulfillment in life? The truth is, they can! To share my own source of happiness with anyone reading this, I quote: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created people to make them share in his own blessed life” (the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1; I added a comma and replaced “man/him” with “people/them”). This one sentence summarizes the entire purpose of us humans: where we came from, why we’re here, and where we’re going. Of course, there is a lot more to learn, and I highly recommend the Catechism as a reading because it reveals the Church’s teachings, and Jesus Christ stands behind his Church. However, for the purpose of what I feel the need to share here: God is the first principle and the end goal of every person. People would be much happier if only they loved God with all their being.
As you can tell, I believe in the Catholic faith. Jesus founded the Catholic Church, and he intended for Christians to be in this Church. I grew up in a Russian Pentecostal community, and, for a long time, that was all I ever knew. Later as an adult, when I prayed to the Holy Spirit to show me the Truth and when I read about the history and when I had realized that the Protestant leaders disobeyed the religious authorities of that day and started their own denominations, the Holy Spirit convicted me. Sure, the Church leaders of the time were corrupt, but such division was still not warranted. My conviction was that, by continuing to be a part of the Protestant faith, I was effectively participating in that disobedience that the founders of Protestantism committed. Reading in the Holy Bible about God’s view of pride and disobedience vs humility and obedience, how the former is equivalent to sorcery and witchcraft and how God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble, I knew that I was wrong, and I felt like a hypocrite continuing to attend the Protestant church. Furthermore, to add to the Holy Spirit’s call to me to change, in the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ really is present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity, so the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I am closer to Jesus when I am at the Catholic Church. It should be understood that Jesus wants to be friends with us and wants to draw us near to himself, which means that we are called to give ourselves to Jesus when we receive him in the Eucharist. Thus, the Holy Spirit led me to the Catholic faith. The Catholic faith rightly teaches that Jesus Christ will forgive us if we repent, and he will give us the grace to do all that he has commanded us to do – it’s not just an empty promise on paper, but he really does empower us in our fight against sin. Jesus’ power is real, and it will change our life if we believe that God’s power is real and if we sincerely ask him to empower us. With this transformation of faith, God has begun to change me into a completely different person: through the Holy Spirit, he has begun to conform me to God the Son, Jesus Christ.
To my reader, I won’t condemn you one way or another. If you’re Protestant (Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, etc.), but if you’re genuinely seeking God and loving him with all your heart and obeying him, building up his kingdom here on earth, then that’s great! I’m happy for you. When the disciples told Jesus that they have prohibited a person from casting out demons in Jesus’ name because that person did not follow Jesus with the disciples, Jesus told them not to forbid such people: who is not against you is for you. Every person of Christ is our brother or sister.
However, if you’re lukewarm with your faith or if you allow yourself to live for yourself, thinking that just because you accepted Jesus means that you don’t have to do anything else anymore, I encourage you to reconsider your spiritual position. To these people, I recommend the book, The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters with the Diabolical , by Jesse Romero. Romero used to be a lukewarm Christian, but, after having all the encounters with the evil and supernatural, he changed to being on fire for Jesus. I wish everyone would be on fire for Jesus. As Ephesians chapter 6 discusses, we really do have a spiritual battle to fight. Yes, as Jesus was dying on the cross, he said, “it is finished.” But Ephesians 6 was written *after* Jesus said this, yet it’s still talking about a spiritual battle despite the fact that Jesus rose from the dead already. That means we are still to fight in the spiritual battle every day of our life until we are done with this life. Only after all the trials and tribulations, when Christ returns and all is set straight, as written in Revelation 21, God will announce the words: it is done!
Let us return to the topic of this website: I don’t mean for this website to be a sermon series or even anything religious. I just wanted to share my happiness and inspiration with others – take it or leave it. In future posts, I hope to try to stay with sharing artwork, video projects, writing pieces, music, etc. Some of it will be religious because that’s a huge part of me. But overall, the intention is to make a difference in the community by sharing my creativity. Be they religious or not, I hope to inspire others to also be creative and do art of their own – it’s what makes us human.
Photo: 26 May 2025. Garden of the Gods. Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.
