Testing dynamic-static page with blocks

  • Trying out Fedora 26: No way-land?

    My relationship with Fedora is of the sort where every two years I look at screenshots and go ‘Nice, why am I not running this again?’ Then I install it and everything looks fine. Then bit by bit the seams start to show. Fedora 26 was to have been my grand entry into all things…

  • Why my udev backup script kept failing and how I fixed it

    I wanted to use udev to sync my backups to an external usb drive but the rsync-based shell script kept mysteriously stopping before the job was done. When I say ‘use udev for backup’ what I mean is to use udev’s discovery of me plugging in the offline backup drive to fire off the backup…

  • Steam In-home Streaming lags with NetworkManager revisited: Replacing NetworkManager with systemd-networkd

    Back in early 2015 I encountered an issue with NetworkManager: Even if you have ever only told it about your one single wireless network (or AP, access point) it insists on scanning the airwaves at regular intervals (about every two minutes) looking for a better connection. I thought that was dumb. This behaviour is known…

  • Chorus2 + Firefox 51 = Easier music streaming

    One of many new features in Kodi 17 is the new default  web frontend, Chorus2. The old Kodi frontend was an extremely basic web remote that allowed you to start, pause and select media. Chorus2 does all that in much slicker package AND has a ‘local’ tab for local playback, i.e. streaming from the Kodi…

  • Upgrading to Kodi 17: The unintuitive bits

    Move the old .kodi profile to .kodi backup and start over. Judging from the changelog there have been a lot of changes to the media libraries so we might as well start afresh. On Ubuntu you will need to apt-get dist-upgrade to get Kodi 17 rather than just upgrade because of new dependencies. This is…

  • Running Kodi as a pure client on linux

    When I got rid of the last Windows partition on any of my home computers, I thought I would finally give NFS a chance to replace CIFS as the reigning network file system in my house. To it’s credit, NFS took that chance and ran with it and it’s worked pretty much flawlessly ever since.…

  • Squeezing the sponge: How to implement a buffering SMTP Handler in Python

    …when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. – Hamlet One of the first things I implement in most Python projects is some quick stream logging so as not to dot too many print statements across the code. At some point file logging usually …

  • Setting default user session in GDM (default != latest)

    Throughout most of my linux life I have had two desktops installed: Gnome and Openbox. The first for most everyday uses, the second specifically to create a no-nonsense environment for games. Openbox just works better for a lot of wine as well as native inux games – less screen-, keyboard and ressources-hogging etc. So when…

  • Stackexchange Answers: Systemd and PIDs

    Systemd tracks PIDs. This is kind of obvious but I never thought to investigate before today. These two commands have been and I suspect, will be, very useful: journalctl _PID = 1234 Get info on anything logged by the process in question. Technically, I suppose (?) it shouldn’t tell you anything that systemctl -u whatever.service…

  • A Systemd service unit for Redshift

    Redshift is a small utility that gradually – as day turns into night – shifts the colour composition of the light from your monitor. The later it gets, the ‘warmer’ (i.e. redder) the colour becomes. This may sound odd but the effect is really pleasant and (literally) easy on the eyes. Once you’ve grown used…

  • “How To Satisfy Debian Dependencies Without Installing The Stupid Package”

    I paid for a mindmapping program a couple of years back as I found the open source options somewhat lacking. The program uses java and the provided .deb has a flexible dependency on java 5 or 6, oracle-or-open-take-your-pick but later version of java – like the openjdk-8-jre package I have on my system – fail…

  • How to get domain-specific user stylesheets in Epiphany

    Epiphany isn’t really at the top of my browser list. I guess I should say ‘Web’ as it’s now called but a) nobody can google that and b) if you open the Gnome acitivities overview and type web you still get Firefox first (quick tip: type ‘epi’ and you’ll get it). Still, it has a…

  • These go to 11

    The PulseAudio daemon has the ability to set it’s niceness level after launch. This can be helpful if the process isn’t prioritised properly and sound cuts out now and again. The man page states: nice-level= The nice level to acquire for the daemon, if  high-priority is  enabled.  Note:  on  some  distributions  X11  uses -10 by…

  • LibreOffice Online alpha demo looks promising

  • Get up on my cloud: What to consider when choosing private cloud software applications

    Getting off of the corporation cloud and onto your own, self-hosted, open source-based is an arduous task. We use a lot of web based services these days and replacing each and every of them, one by one, requires some forethought so that you don’t move all your data over to something that simply does not…