Re: Suggestions: Job boards, listings, contacts? for Senior Technical Writer

[David Rysdam]

Alan Johnson  writes:
> IIRC, and my info is several years old at best, Indeed.com does not quite
> work like that.  They are an aggregator that posts your resume on other job
> boards and maintain their own internal database as well.  If you were
> getting lame resumes from Indeed.com, I would expect the problem was with
> whoever was using the tool and sending them to you rather than the tool
> itself.  Most of these tools take some specialized skills on the recruiting
> side to get the search terms right but even then you run the risk of
> nursing students listing IT skills that could create some strange results.
> A clueful recruiter should filter those out before sending them along.

I have no idea how Indeed works or if there even was a recruiter
involved. I just know that the entire group of us can now say "it's from
Indeed.com" and we just laugh and move to the next resume.
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Re: Suggestions: Job boards, listings, contacts? for Senior Technical Writer

[David Rysdam]

Alan Johnson  writes:
> Back when I worked for one of the top recruiting companies, the industry
> experts there said indeed.com ...[was] the top resume
> posting services.

If this was ever true, it is certainly not now. I was the recipient of
some resumes from Indeed.com and they were not just bad, they were
ridiculous. Like, nursing student resumes.
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Re: Linux for time lapse and wifi?

[David Rysdam]

Ken D'Ambrosio  writes:
> On 2017-06-28 10:31, Richard Kolb II wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> I'm looking into using a pine a64 running ubuntu mate to setup a time
>> lapse photo using a standard digital camera controlled over USB. I
>> haven't done a ton of research into it yet, but I wanted to see if
>> anyone else has done something similar and had some advice/opinions. I
>> was thinking of setting this up first as a way to capture an event
>> going on, and second as a wildlife/security camera.
>
> Well, I bought the Pinebook, and -- given its price, among other things 
> -- seems like it would do a fine job using its webcam.  But if you want 
> high quality stuff, I suppose a "real" camera is the way to fly, and not 
> a webcam (be it part of a Pinebook or something external).

I've been wanted to do some OpenCV projects, so I looked into
webcams. You can get 1080p for under $50 now. Plug and go in Debian
8. (I actually bought 720p for $30, but had to do it twice because the
first time I got one that was for video chat and didn't autofocus.)

Obviously you can use a video cam for snapshots too, so this might be a
good way to go. No need to worry about powering both the camera and the
Pine.
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"investigator hackers"?

[David Rysdam]

A friend-of-a-friend is having trouble online. Someone is posting fake
reports on various sites, maybe stalking. I don't know the details, but
what I heard didn't sound actionable-by-the-police.

Our common friend asked me if anything like an "investigator hacker"
existed that could look into these things, trace it back, send take-down
requests, etc.

I don't particularly want to get involved myself, but I did say it
sounded like a pretty lucrative (although possibly not that effective)
business plan. Has anyone else heard of something like this?
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Re: Govt Source Code Policy

[David Rysdam]

"Greg Rundlett (freephile)"  writes:
> If the government actually goes through with 'open sourcing' their work,
> it's actually a giant corporate handout because companies will have greater
> access to publicly funded works that they can then incorporate into
> proprietary works.

By that argument, roads are a "giant corporate handout" because shipping
and schools are a "giant corporate handout" because they teach useful
skills.
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Re: What Language for a kid

[David Rysdam]

Ric Werme  writes:
> PostScript is a Lisp variant.

I don't think I would say that. It's a stack-based thing that's like
Forth or an RPN calculator. Lisp is nothing like that.

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Re: What Language for a kid

[David Rysdam]

Paul Beaudet  writes:
> One thing I really want to recommend against is scratch or mindstorm. I
> think they are both really fun and all, but no one that solely uses
> graphical code block type systems self identify as a programmer or has
> confidence to tackle issues that involve code. Honestly it defeats the
> whole point of the exposure by making code look like a toy.

No, sorry, I have to completely disagree with this. "Doesn't look like
code" has nothing to do with anything.

What Scratch is great at is abstracting "how do I describe and debug an
algorithm" out from "how do I speak in this weird language and use these
weird tools". Teaching someone to program has nothing to do with how to
format Python/C/Java/Lisp code. Using pre-formatted blocks is a great
way to introduce those real fundamentals.

It is absolutely true (so far) that if you want to write "real" programs
you have to move beyond Scratch. But that doesn't make it a bad place to
start. But it is also true that if you want to write "real" programs,
just typing well-formatted C isn't enough--you have to understand when
and how to use conditionals, loops, functions and data structures.

For some people, using the tools is the fun part and if they happen to
learn some concepts that's a bonus. Those people might want to start
with Python or even C. Other people are interested in the concepts but
struggling with the tools is the barrier. For those people, Scratch is a
great introduction.
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Re: Networking Question

[David Rysdam]

Greg Kettmann  writes:
> Could someone get me pushed in the right direction?  Any help is 
> appreciated.  BTW, "you're doing it all wrong and you should be doing 
> something else instead" is a perfectly acceptable response. I'm not 
> proud, just curious.

I don't understand why you are changing your entire internal network
just because you have a different ISP. 

Set up the home network however you want, with private addresses. Have
that served by a single wireless router.

Meanwhile coming in from the outside you have two ISPs, each terminating
in a router at your house.

Now connect the single internal router to the two external
ones. Ideally, you could just have the internal one have two DHCP
servers with a priority or something, but there probably isn't any
firmware that does that. You may need a real computer between them. Or
maybe just an A/B switch.
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Re: gps navigation project?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> FWIW - has anyone worked on TCP over text messages?  If they can do it over
> carrier pigeons...

I've wondered about this. Another feature I'd like is to be able to
share my location with someone. But I don't necessarily want to upload
it to a server somewhere--this will inevitably be owned by someone else
(for certain values of phone owner). Real computers can talk directly to
each other over the internet, why can't portable media consumption
devices?

You could call or text, but the receiving end needs to be set up to not
ring/beep and to alert the relevant app. There are apps that can do
this, so it's not a huge problem.

I can even envision replacing the SMS app itself with a tcpd-like to
farm incoming requests out to whichever app was responsible for it.

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Re: gps navigation project?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> My car has something else and I can avoid whole roads which is nice.

Another planned feature. In fact, this is the first time I've ever heard
of any existing GPS/routing system that did this. Another one is "avoid
area", such as "don't go within 100 miles of NYC".

I'm not replying there, but I saw the Waze traffic mentions. Agreed
about the data access being the problem there. It really seems like a
lot of normal traffic information could just be downloaded and used
offline. Basically it's a weighting function across spacetime rather
than just space (as is usually the case). I want to experiment with this
by having my routes timestamped and saved, then used as inputs to future
routings in the same area.
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Re: gps navigation project?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> Is this project going to be a stand alone GPS w/no internet like a garmin
> or something like google maps on a phone? That will drive some of your
> design decisions.
>
> If it has internet access, will it use mobile wireless or wifi/ethernet?
> Does it need to be usable in a car?

I've been envisioning using it on a phone or tablet. Because I'm a
cheapskate that doesn't pay much for data, it would need to be able to
work offline. But the entire idea is that I'd put a GPX on there and it
would only navigate me through that without changing the route (other
than getting me back to the route if I stray from it), so that's not a
big problem.

Still, I've got some use cases that would involve data or wifi. For
instance, creating my route at a hotel room (either on the phone or on a
real comptuer and sending it to the phone), then navigating
offline. That could work well with a tablet, which tend to have wifi but
not mobile data in the lower end, anyway.
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Re: gps navigation project?

[David Rysdam]

Derek Atkins  writes:
> Could you explain your distinction between "Routing" and "Navigation"
> here?  I'm not sure I really understand the difference, unless you just
> mean "placing a dot on a map and moving the map as you move" (i.e. the
> UI piece).

"Routing" is I think a fairly well-defined term meaning the more-or-less
mathematical process of finding some way through the road network from A
to B. "Navigation" might be less well-defined, but I'm using it to mean
the turning of that route into a sequence of steps for a human to
follow, either by text or voice.

>Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH
>warl...@mit.eduPGP key available

...wait a minute. I've interacted with you via my work email
address. Worlds are colliding!
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gps navigation project?

[David Rysdam]

I've complained here before about how much I hate pretty much all GPS
devices/software. I finally partly-decided to half-heartedly make a
feeble stab at doing something about it!

There's 3 parts:

Maps: OSM is the obvious choice.

Routing: There's a bunch of good routers out there, although one major
thrust of my own thing involves changing the routing (or at least
exposing parameters nobody else seems to expose the way I want). I
figure I'll start with one of those with my own pre-processor in front
of it, then go from there.

Navigation: There doesn't seem to be a lot of work in this area,
although it's hard to google for without getting inundated by retail
product hits.

The debian repos have "navit" that does a full end-to-end thing, which I
don't want. I could maybe rip out just the navigation part, but their
Android app is so awful it gives me a bad code smell feeling.

Does anyone know of any projects that specifically target (and do a good
job on) taking a pile of maps and a GPX file and turning that into a
sequence of "in 20 miles, turn left"-type directions?
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Re: FYI: Comcast Metro ethernet to the home

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> (but, really--how come fiber is available in places like Wilton and Chichester
>  before it's available in here? Is it normal for cities to be the 
> cyber-boonies?)

Wait, *Wilton* has fiber and Milford doesn't? Aren't they both
Fairpoint?
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Re: PC Build

[David Rysdam]

"Greg Rundlett (freephile)"  writes:
> I hardly know anything about hardware and mostly buy from newegg or
> tigerdirect.  It's been years since I built my first linux box from
> scratch.  Any comments, advice from regular or recent builders?

I know just enough about hardware to realize I know nothing. Matching
speeds and buffers and voltages and pinouts--even if I knew how it all
worked it would still be a vast combinatorics game.

What I've done with great success is:

1) Browse through Newegg's bundled "build your own" page and find
   one that is as powerful as you want, but a little too
   expensive. This gets you a list of things that work together to
   do what you want to do.
   
2) Remove/downgrade parts you don't want. (Mine is usually the video
   card, his might be a smaller HD or no monitor or a smaller case
   or something.)

2b) After removing parts, you may also be able to downsize the power
supply (although in his case, maybe not).

 3) Price all those parts separately, not as the bundle, and see
what it comes to.

Alternatively, you could look for something just under the right price
but not powerful enough and then upgrade the video card. 
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Re: Need some suggestions on a borked upgrade

[David Rysdam]

Jeffry Smith  writes:
>> Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
>> > Can you run "apt-get install -f 2>&1 | tee apt-errors.log"
>>
>> OT, but why not just:
>>
>> apt-get install > apt-errors.log 2>&1
>>
> The -f flag tells apt to try and fix errors.

I left the -f out accidentally. I left the pipe and the tee out on
purpose.
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Re: Need some suggestions on a borked upgrade

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> Can you run "apt-get install -f 2>&1 | tee apt-errors.log"

OT, but why not just:

apt-get install > apt-errors.log 2>&1

?
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Re: Need some suggestions on a borked upgrade

[David Rysdam]

Bruce Labitt  writes:
> Any suggestions?  apt-get -f install returns the error message. apt-get 
> remove returns the same error.  Looking for a few ideas. I'll try to use 
> some of them tonight to attempt a fix.  Got to visit Mom now...

I'm always a "nuke it from orbit" person with these things. /home is a
separate partition and I have (at least) two others, for alternately
installing fresh on, back and forth. I *never* "upgrade".

If /home is separate, I'd just nuke / and start over. If /home isn't
separate, back it up, repartition and start over.
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Re: poking around for opportunities

[David Rysdam]

Ric Werme  writes:
> Oh heavens, haven't you ever seen a kiosk with a BSOD?

Yes, of course I have. The point was that I never dreamed that putting a
computer into a second box would be considered "embedded".
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Re: poking around for opportunities

[David Rysdam]

roger.levass...@comcast.net writes:
> The embedded stuff that I've been working on over the last 10 years
> have CPUs (ARMs) that in terms of compute power, RAM, and storage that
> outclass PCs and Workstations that I worked on during the 1990s. It
> was a big deal when that first 1GB SCSI disk drive became available to
> put into a workstation. Now we're swimming in storage with ever larger
> SDHC storage cards.

I've been assuming that "embedded" meant some significant subset of the
following properties:

1) realtime
2) re-entrant/parallel/interrupt-driven
3) specialty hardware
4) specialty OS (if there's an OS there at all)

Despite my earlier joke and my Arduino/Pi experience, I don't actually
feel comfortable putting "embedded" on my resume. However, now if
someone asks me I can at least be intelligent enough to ask what they
mean by that term. If it's just a regular PC running in a kiosk, that's
completely different than what I was picturing.
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RE: poking around for opportunities

[David Rysdam]

Kevin French  writes:
> While I am quite happy working in the library profession, it's not one
> where getting absurdly rich is a concern.

Wow, you aren't kidding. Thanks for forwarding the posting.
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Re: poking around for opportunities

[David Rysdam]

Tyson Sawyer  writes:
> I've seen a good number of systems with plenty of memory and CPU.
> However, they don't have a keyboard/monitor and updates or normally a
> significant PITA and crashes/visible bugs are unacceptable.  ...so
> don't write crummy code. ;-)

I've written plenty of needs-to-run-for-weeks-by-itself software running
in a headless environment. And all my code is always reasonably
efficient, then evaluated, and then parts that aren't efficient enough
are rewritten. (Premature optimization is the root of all evil.)

I guess I can put "embedded" on my resume now...
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Re: poking around for opportunities

[David Rysdam]

Tyson Sawyer  writes:
> I'm not sure what area you looking for, and it's in Woburn, but
> levantpower.com is hiring.  We are a well funded start-up developing an
> active suspension system for cars.

Milford/Nashua area. 

This place looks OK in general, but doesn't fit for a reason that's
worth bringing up: Other than messing with some Arduinos, I'm not an
embedded development person. "Embedded" seems to be in about 90% of job
postings for software people now.

Which isn't to say I couldn't do it, I just don't have anything like
that on my resume.
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poking around for opportunities

[David Rysdam]

I've been at my current position for almost 11 years now and I'm
thinking about moving on to something fresh. I'm looking for some ideas
in the Milford/Nashua area.

The kind of thing I would be looking for would ideally be some kind of
non-vanilla-business-app thing (engineering/scientific, for instance)
with a small group where everyone does a little bit of everything (vs a
cog in a huge machine). I'm a software engineer, but I have done IS/IT
and don't object to it sprinkled throughout my day. Something where
knowing a little bit about everything and being able to learn the
details quickly is more valuable than already knowing everything about
one thing. Examples:

 - software engineer supporting research scientist
 - programmer/sysadmin at library/school

Any ideas?
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Re: Local inexpensive media destruction?

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> Ben Scott  writes:
>>   If I had a *lot* of media, I might build a nice, hot fire, and toss
>> things in one at a time.  Or just do the above over time.
>
> Sounds like a good time.
>
> I haven't been to a party like that in a while :)

With a little of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

and a little of that:

http://copsub.com/

You can be really sure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q
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Re: Web-based photo/video album?

[David Rysdam]

Ken D'Ambrosio  writes:
> Hey, all.  It's the holidays, and I've decided it's time for me to get 
> my family stuff organized.  I've used Gallery 
> (http://galleryproject.org/) before, but it looks like it's gone into 
> moribund mode -- and, honesty, the format was great back in Web 1.0 
> days, but lacked the nifty interaction you get with newer stuff.  I've 
> seen some that look decent, but don't appear to support videos.  
> Wondering if anyone had any suggestions of applications that support 
> both?

I've never used it, but isn't the Party Line supposed to be Media
Goblin?
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Re: "KIBO" license plate

[David Rysdam]

Bill Ricker  writes:
> I hope the plates are his; iirc he was car-free when i knew him ... where
> did you see this ?

In Milford most recently, but I don't remember the other one.

I don't know if it's him either, it could easily be an unrelated vanity
plate. 
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"KIBO" license plate

[David Rysdam]

I've seen this twice in the last few years. Which one of you is it?
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Re: Drill Press Local to Nashua/Amherst/Milford needed

[David Rysdam]

"mad...@li.org"  writes:
> There are two parts to it. One part is a set of four "shelves" (2'
> long and 8" wide) of acrylic (not PVC), each shelf is 1/4" thick and
> has a covering of thin plastic clinging to protect it from scratching,
> not paper. My thoughts on these are to clamp them together and drill
> four 1/4" holes (one in each corner, centered about 3/4 inch in from
> the edges).

>From the clamping together, I guess this isn't into the edge but into
the "flat". That's pretty doable.

> The three other boards are smaller and thinner and will need about
> fourteen holes of three different sizes drilled in them. For those I
> will have a paper template that can be glued to the board, marking the
> holes to be drilled.

This also doesn't sound too hard.

> I will get all the drill bits necessary for this, I just need the
> drill press for a little while, and I welcome any expertise that comes
> along with it.

You can use mine if you want. My drill press has a speed chart and it
actually calls for a *high* speed for acrylic. If high speed really is
the thing, we could also do this on my small mill. You probably don't
need the precision, but having the handwheels is a lot more convenient
than swinging the drill press table around.

If you have scraps, definite bring some to experiment with. I've got
plenty of clamps
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Re: Drill Press Local to Nashua/Amherst/Milford needed

[David Rysdam]

Bill Ricker  writes:
> If you can't slow it enough, can you spray-cool when drilling plastic?
> I forget if you'd want wood bit or metal bit for this ?

I googled this and it looks like there's a special acrylic bit you can
use. Looks like a regular bit, but with a much sharper tip. It also
looks optional.

Pretty much all my bits are 118 degree tips and I use them on both wood
and metal with no problem other than the crappy black-coated, Home
Depot-level ones don't really work on metal. Those go in the toolbox for
mobile repairs around the house.

> If this particular acrylic machines at all like Lucite™ (only acrylic
> i've machined, in a prior century!), it also wants to be machined with
> its protective adhesiver-paper cover still on, it helps prevents
> chipping.  If you don't have a cover layer, shelf-paper or
> packing-tape might temporarily replace it ?

I've been thinking maddog's acrylic is a laser-cut thing he ordered
somewhere and wouldn't have any paper. MDF/plywood backing would
probably work.

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Re: Drill Press Local to Nashua/Amherst/Milford needed

[David Rysdam]

"mad...@li.org"  writes:
> If anyone has a small drill press in the greater Nashua, area .that I
> could use I would greatly appreciate it. I will show up with paper
> patterns made to show where to cut the holes.

I can help with this. I've got a mini-machine shop in my basement in
Milford. The drill press is only a benchtop, but it sounds like you
don't have anything very big going on.

One possible difficulty is the fact that this is acrylic. Acrylic melts
if you try to cut or drill too fast. I can slow my spindle speed down,
but I'm not sure how slow it goes. We should practice on some scraps if
you have any.

Also, drilling into the edge could be problematic if you need to make a
box out of the pieces. I have an angle plate we can set up on if needed,
depending on some factors. From your description, it's a whole pattern
on the "flat side", though.

I didn't know about the Banana Pi. Seems pretty neat and so does this
cluster thing.
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Re: lowering hits to processor

[David Rysdam]

Susan Cragin  writes:
> This is probably mostly a wine problem. But I do what I can to help
> out: I have a fast machine with a solid-state drive and plenty of RAM,
> I have installed Lubuntu with the low-latency kernel, and disabled the
> zeitgeist logger. I don't open any programs I don't need. Any
> suggestions? Any other daemons I can axe? I need pulseaudio,

With plenty of RAM, the bottleneck among multiple programs is probably
just the CPU. How many do you have?

Also, a year or so ago my wife was complaining about a slow computer. I
wrote a script to just save the output of top every 60s and then grepped
through it after a few days. The killer turned out to be a spreadsheet,
which was (unbeknownst to us) running in an emulator. 

The point of that story isn't the spreadsheet. The point is to do some
logging and grepping. You can't fix what you can't measure.
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Re: powerschool webscraper?

[David Rysdam]

David Rysdam  writes:
> However, there's no change detection. I guess I have to have memorized
> all the grades, outstanding assignments, etc for each child so I can see
> what's different when I check the next time. "Huh...it's 90% now. Was it
> 91% yesterday? Maybe I should click through and see if he flunked
> something."
>
> I figured I'd do a simple little script that would download the page and
> just do a diff. Not so fast--it's hidden behind javascript.

So I solved this today (or I think I did--have to actually get some
output before I'm sure, but It Should Work(tm)). Nobody really cares
about the solution per se, but when/if any of you get some kids with
grades hidden inside PowerSchool, here's what I did:

They have a way to email results out. On the downside, you can't ask it
only for new stuff--it email blasts you every class, every day for every
child. (Clearly nobody at PowerSchool has any kids in school.) On the
upside, it's plain text and gives a dump of all the assignments and
their grades (for now...).

I created a separate email account just for receiving these
messages. Then I have a script that canonicalizes each one (by child and
class) and does a diff against a git repository, mailing me if anything
happened.

The extra nice part of this is that I can easily add another
subscriber. My wife, obvs, but also the children themselves because
apparently *that's the only way they know what they got* (for at least
some assignments). 

Maybe the Hour of Code will create a populace that demands a more
programmable Internet...
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Re: Parenting and PGP

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> What's the right age or developmental milestone at which to introduce
> (or help them learn about--or _let_ them learn about, depending on your
> perspective...) strong crypto like GnuPG?

Isaac (7) asked me about prime numbers the other day. We talked about
them, including factorization a little and I mentioned that something
like that could form the basis of a cryptosystem. But we weren't able to
go any further as I was getting dinner ready.

I have Schieneieieienieirs _Applied Cryptography_ and Evan (15) is
"reading" it, meaning it is somewhere in the teetering pile of other
books he is also "reading".
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Re:

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:

> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:36 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen 
> wrote:
>> Or maybe I could actually make an _Internet VCR_. I just need to
>> figure out what that even means
>
> Something that records your web browser and takes screenshots of what you
> clicked so you can play it back of course!  

This is actually a pretty great idea. Like a really beefed up (and
hopefully unbreakable [I'm looking at you, YouTube]) Back Button.
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Re: powerschool webscraper?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> Powerschool also has an API and there are tools that hook into it.  For
> example: https://github.com/powerapi/powerapi-php

Ah, this is interesting.
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Re: powerschool webscraper?

[David Rysdam]

David Rysdam  writes:
> I had this problem with htmlunit too. It wanted to fire up a browser
> GUI. No, bad tool!
>
> Probably there are no GUI-less, javascript-capable, scriptable tools out
> there. There's probably some way to cobble one together now that guile
> supports javascript, but like I said: time.

It's also making me depressed how terrible the internet has
become. We've made a thing to run on computer that computers themselves
can't use. Why does an extremely simple, automatable task like "check if
posted grades have changed" require a human being to spend valuable time
poking buttons (or programming a very faithful simulation thereof)?

We used to be a tool-making species. Then a tool-using species. Now
we're a tool-used species. 
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Re: powerschool webscraper?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> I'd look at Selenium .  I heard about it from
> our QA guys for automation.

It's cool, but not really what I want. I'm not automating this because I
care how a particular browser works. I'm automating it because I want it
automated. I don't need or even want a GUI. I want to run it as a cron
job and email myself a result when there is one.

I had this problem with htmlunit too. It wanted to fire up a browser
GUI. No, bad tool!

Probably there are no GUI-less, javascript-capable, scriptable tools out
there. There's probably some way to cobble one together now that guile
supports javascript, but like I said: time.
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Re: powerschool webscraper?

[David Rysdam]

Bill Freeman  writes:
> Not that I know of an existing tool (BeautifulSoup probably doesn't deal
> with the JavaScript), but it seems like you want to capture the eventual
> DOM.  You need something that you can trigger when the page has
> settled. 

Nope. I thought this too, but it's not true. I have absolutely no
compunction about actually parsing the HTML--I would just grep for
whatever keyword worked and jam a POST in the web form for my
username/password, BeautifulSoup be damned.

However, it's something else. I can't think of the term now, but it
isn't a matter finding something in the page I can use. I have to
actually simulate a web browser to run the Javascript so I communicate
with the server and get the right security tokens and whatever. 
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powerschool webscraper?

[David Rysdam]

The Milford school district uses this "PowerSchool" web thing so parents
can check on kids' grades (middle school and up). It's pretty useful,
for those teachers that update at a reasonable frequency.

However, there's no change detection. I guess I have to have memorized
all the grades, outstanding assignments, etc for each child so I can see
what's different when I check the next time. "Huh...it's 90% now. Was it
91% yesterday? Maybe I should click through and see if he flunked
something."

I figured I'd do a simple little script that would download the page and
just do a diff. Not so fast--it's hidden behind javascript.

I know this would be trivial for someone who has done this. Heck, it
would probably be trivial for me if I didn't have 100 other projects
going and I had time to learn the tools (looks like "htmlunit" in this
case). However, it suddenly occurred to me that someone may have
*already* done this, maybe even for Milford's particular installation.

So...have you?
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Matt Minuti  writes:
> One of the bonus points of using an arduino is that he can just hook up as
> many keys as he wants, in whatever kind of layout he wants, and then have
> the arduino appear to be a keyboard.  

Yep, this is the plan. I cleaned out a bunch a few weeks ago because
"nobody's doing any of this electronics stuff" and NOW he wants to do
Arduino. Fortunately I seem to have kept all the vital pieces (boards,
wire, breadboards, etc).
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Paul Beaudet  writes:
> You might be able to get 7 if one of the keys is a modifier like ctrl alt
> meta or shift
>
> Still likely the keyboard, one adventurous way to check is to open up the
> keyboard and
> see if there is a diode for every key. If not that, well that explains your
> 3KRO.
> What is great, is that you can probably find one that does, near someones
> trash can.
> Might have to research to find the right models though.
>
> I read this a while back that cleared some of my questions.
> http://blog.komar.be/how-to-make-a-keyboard-the-matrix/
>
> Unapologetically written by an EE.. might want to skip to the section
> before diode part.

I'm not an EE but I have taken small roles in some television
productions, so I skimmed and got the gist. The real key is finding the
googleable term "NKRO".

Looks like these keyboards are about $100-$150. That seems a little
pricey for a fiddling around experiment unless I can find one lying
around somewhere. Alternatively, I see there are some keypads out there
with the diodes to allow 10KRO or NKRO for using with an arduino.

In a sense that's exactly what he wants, but I suspect that practically
speaking it's going to kill his project since he doesn't know anything
about electronics and I dunno if I want to spend the time being his
hardware engineer. We'll see.
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> Does the USB HID simultaneous key limit apply to a MIDI-> usb adapter?
> They adapters are pretty cheap nowadays.
>
> Then you need a your chording keyboard to speak MIDI.

So this is interesting. Evan, the one commissioned to write the program,
reported that he could only get *3* simultaneous keys out. I tried my
semi-independent program and I can partially confirm this. I can always
get 3, but if I choose carefully I can get up to 6. I have to...scatter
the keys across the keyboard more evenly? Or choose different rows? I'm
not sure what the pattern is yet, although it doesn't matter because:

Kyle's scheme needs at least 7 but he'd prefer 10 keys. So maybe MIDI is
the way to go. Or PS2, if I can find a keyboard and a hole to plug it
into. Oh wait, HIS computer has PS2, so that's OK. And the flea
market/freecycle/people at work probably have tons of PS2 keyboards
they'd love to give away.

Oh ho ho! His computer actually *has* a PS2 keyboard already attached!
Imma try it now.

...

Huh, that doesn't really work either. I can get up to 6, but I still
have to choose carefully (or something). Maybe the Linux keyboard driver
is the real problem? Or the keyboard hardware itself? Or maybe just my
program, which I will admit is hacked together.

I'm attaching it for comment. I based it on something I found
online. Compile with 

gcc -o keychord keychord.c -lncurses

and run like

sudo ./keychord /dev/input/

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

void handler (int sig)
{
	printf ("nexiting...(%d)n", sig);
	exit (0);
}

void perror_exit (char *error)
{
	perror (error);
	handler (9);
}

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
	struct input_event ev[64];
	int fd, rd, value, size = sizeof (struct input_event),
		kbdwidth=15, row, col;
	char name[256] = "Unknown", ch;
	char *device = NULL;

	//Setup check
	if (argv[1] == NULL){
		printf("Please specify (on the command line) the path to the dev event interface devicen");
		exit (0);
	 }

	if ((getuid ()) != 0)
		printf ("You are not root! This may not work...n");

	if (argc > 1)
		device = argv[1];

	//Open Device
	if ((fd = open (device, O_RDONLY)) == -1)
		printf ("%s is not a vaild device.n", device);

	//Print Device Name
	ioctl (fd, EVIOCGNAME (sizeof (name)), name);
	printf ("Reading From : %s (%s)n", device, name);

	fflush(stdout);

	initscr();
	noecho();
	curs_set(0);
	refresh();
	while (1){
		/* seems to be some junk (bounce?) in the first event and the
		   third one is always 0, so just use the second */
		if ((rd = read (fd, ev, size * 3)) < size)
			perror_exit ("read()");

		/* printw("\n"); */
		/* printw("type (1 = a key event): %u\n", ev[1].type); */
		/* printw("code (key code, see linux/input.h): %u\n", ev[1].code); */
		/* printw("value (0 = up, 1 = down): %d\n", ev[1].value); */

		if (ev[1].type != 1) continue;

		// keycodes seem to roughly follow layout on actual keyboard
		row = 4*(ev[1].code/kbdwidth);
		col = 10*(ev[1].code % kbdwidth);
		switch(ev[1].code) {
		  case KEY_A: ch = 'a'; break;
		  case KEY_B: ch = 'b'; break;
		  case KEY_C: ch = 'c'; break;
		  case KEY_D: ch = 'd'; break;
		  case KEY_E: ch = 'e'; break;
			  // absolutely no idea why KEY_F doesn't work...
		  case 33: ch = 'f'; break;
		  case KEY_G: ch = 'g'; break;
		  case KEY_H: ch = 'h'; break;
		  case KEY_I: ch = 'i'; break;
		  case KEY_J: ch = 'j'; break;
		  case KEY_K: ch = 'k'; break;
		  case KEY_L: ch = 'l'; break;
		  case KEY_M: ch = 'm'; break;
		  case KEY_N: ch = 'n'; break;
		  case KEY_O: ch = 'o'; break;
		  case KEY_P: ch = 'p'; break;
		  case KEY_Q: ch = 'q'; break;
		  case KEY_R: ch = 'r'; break;
		  case KEY_S: ch = 's'; break;
		  case KEY_T: ch = 't'; break;
		  case KEY_U: ch = 'u'; break;
		  case KEY_V: ch = 'v'; break;
		  case KEY_W: ch = 'w'; break;
		  case KEY_X: ch = 'x'; break;
		  case KEY_Y: ch = 'y'; break;
		  case KEY_Z: ch = 'z'; break;
		  default: ch = ' ';
		}

		mvaddch(row, col, ch|(ev[1].value?A_REVERSE:0));

		refresh();
	}
	endwin();

	return 0;
}

Really, there should be no limitation. I guess it's because they
keyboard has to report "repeat" when you hold a key down. But with our
own electronics, we can define the protocol to just detect edges, so no
numerical limit would exist--just send one at a time, every time.
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> Then you need a your chording keyboard to speak MIDI.

It's probably ridiculous to require, for instance, school computers to
have MIDI just so Kyle can use his NerdTyper (I made up that name just
now, but I kinda like it). Instead, an active (in the sense of "has a
CPU") device is probably the way to go so it can emulate a real
keyboard.
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> How about MIDI?

When I was about to hit "reply", I was going to say "I dunno, we haven't
tried it yet." But as I did, I had a thought (which maybe was your
intent): MIDI has a chording keyboard input. 

Of course, nobody has MIDI
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Paul Beaudet  writes:
> USB hid can only report 6 keys at a time and some modifiers, which would be
> fine for most chorded applications
> except for the fact that, the keyboards that any given one of us has likely
> fails to report more than
> 3 keys at one time depending on which keys are being chorded.

Oho, I didn't know either of these things. Fortunately, he is
gravitating towards a design with purpose-built hardware and in-line
Arduino. The latter due to not wanting to write device drivers, etc and
the former because he wants to be able to put the buttons right where he
needs them.
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

John Abreau  writes:
> If the purpose is to play and learn, rather than to solve a problem, then
> there's nothing wrong with inventing your own programming language.

I agree with the explicit statement above, but I disagree with the
implicit statement that other goals mean there is something wrong with
inventing your own programming language.

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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

John Abreau  writes:
> Same logic could be applied to programming. Why write in C++, Java,
> Perl, or Python, when he could have the fun of designing his own
> programming language from scratch?

You say this like it's a bad idea for a 13 year old to make things.

> Heck, why not take it a step further and savor the joys of designing and
> fabricating his own CPU? Or even reinvent the entire history of technology
> right from the beginning with the earliest stone axe? Yabba dabba do!  :)

Actually, he's already built (some of) his own CPU in Minecraft redstone.
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Paul Beaudet  writes:
> I'm more than willing to sit down with and help out anyone with a serious
> interest in building typing devices to help people communicate more
> efficiently.

Thanks for the tips and the offer. Any time I try to show him other
people's starts he waves them away because designing it is 99% of the
fun.
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Re: simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Matt Minuti  writes:
> I'd strongly suggest looking at doing a little bit of hardware hacking via
> the Arduino Leonardo. It's trivially easy to make it show up as a generic
> USB HID keyboard, meaning no fancy driver concerns, no matter the OS.
>
> The keys could either be a handful (heh) of buttons laid out however he
> wants, or you could even use a PS/2 keyboard and have the Arduino interpret
> the keycodes and send the appropriate keypress signals via USB.

I actually suggested this, but he knows what I consider the bare minimum
of programming and even less electronics. Right now he's in an
exploratory phase. If he gets farther, I'll help him with an
Arduino/Pi/programmable keylogger and he can design and 3D print an
enclosure with keys.
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simulating chorded keyboards

[David Rysdam]

Remember the MIDI son? This is a different son, Kyle, with a different
project. He's interested in chorded keyboards. You can find these here
and there online, but he wants to design his own. To start, he wants to
simulate one with a regular keyboard.

We've been looking into ways to let him flexibly define keyboard input
(chords, modifier keys, etc) but without requiring a ton of low-level
programming.

1) A simple game engine (pygame, e.g.) that reports "key down" and "key
up" events rather than simply delivering a pressed key via something
like read(), getchar(), etc. He needs to get between these events to
figure out the "current chord". Even pygame is more programming than he
really wants to do, though.

2) xkeycaps looks like the opposite of what I want, but it's described
so poorly I can't tell for sure. It looks like I can generate multiple
keysyms from a single key press, but not vice versa.

3) emacs! This was actually my first suggestion, since it does almost
everything he wants. Of course, he'd have to learn emacs first. However,
there's another problem that I'm not sure can be overcome. Aren't emacs
sequences limited such that you can't have one be a prefix of another?

For instance, he'd like to be able to do this:

'i' key down followed by 'i' key up: 'i'
'i' down followed by 'k' down followed by 'i' and 'k' both up: 'm'

but with emacs you can have "i+k" mapped to m but then not 'i' mapped to
'i'.
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Re: Linux + MIDI

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> No. No bluetooth keyboard. Just stoicism.

You are way more patient with bad technology than I am.

> [1] Pictures Under Glass: 
> http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

Awesome essay. I had already figured out the hammer part. That's only
the tip of the problem iceberg, but it's already more than 90% of people
realize. And I could have written the rest of the essay too, but only
for individual items--like ebooks. I hadn't put it all together.

Of course, nothing has changed in the 3 years since that came out. It's
gotten worse. I had a chance to try Windows 8 the other day. It was on a
desktop, but it wanted me to "swipe" to do anything. The number of input
"bits" is already much lower on a mouse than on a keyboard but they cut
out even most of those. Useful!
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Re: Linux + MIDI

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> On the up side, my asking price is zero thalers + you stop by my house
> to pick it up. 😉

That's exactly as many thalers as I own! OK, it's a deal.

> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Wow, you are able to email from a phone really well. I can barely tap
out a legible message and you've got formatted links and
everything. Bluetooth keyboard?

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Re: Linux + MIDI

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> I don't know if this is useful, but I have an old SoundBlaster Extigy
> that I'd be happy to donate. It has MIDI, as well as all sorts of
> other hookups, though I never used them.

I was going to turn this down, thinking it was a sound card (he's
probably migrating to a laptop soon). Turns out it's not a sound card
and I don't know what to do because I can't tell what it *is*.

I read large parts of the manual, but I still don't get it. A mixer? A
standalone MIDI controller?
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Re: Linux + MIDI

[David Rysdam]

Mac  writes:
> Yeah, well, midi on linux...fun, fun, fun.
>
> Well there has to be a device available that had the MIDI hardware
> interface.
>
> Then you need something to drive it.
>
> I use JACK. But it can be done with ALSA.
>
> Best to install UBUNTU Studio, probably, after you get a MIDI port.
>
> Some sound cards have them. The usb to MIDI dongles are inexpensive.

Oh wait, I'm talking about MIDI *input* to the computer. Although I
guess he'd probably want to go bidi pretty soon anyway.

Is there a good tutorial out there because the above is a little too
terse to help me much.
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Linux + MIDI

[David Rysdam]

My son, Evan, is into computers and music. He's got an electronic piano
that he says has MIDI out. All our computers are running Linux. I know
basically nothing about MIDI. Does anyone have any experience hooking
these up?

I decided there must be such a thing as a MIDI/USB adapter, but looking
them up they mention drivers and stuff. 'apt-cache search midi usb'
finds 2 hits, one of which is about temperature sensors(?). Is there
some standard I should be looking for? Will any of the MIDI-supporting
packages be able to read from the USB port?

What, basically, is the deal with Linux and MIDI?

(Also, is that maddog that I see cruising around with the "FREESW" real
license plate and "LINUX" fake one?)
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another one gnhlug probably likes

[David Rysdam]

http://www.wadleighlibrary.org/wadleigh-library-presents-lawrence-lessig/

>From the title, I assume this is about finance reform, not IP reform,
but who knows.

And while we are talking about the Milford library, some here may be
interested to know they have a 3D printer now. They are in the process
of setting up a policy on how patrons can use it.
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Re: wtmp/last weird behavior

[David Rysdam]

mark  writes:
> What version of Linux is this?   Have you looked through /var/log/messages
> for the corresponding login entries? Try aureport to see what auditd picked
> up for login behavior.

This is Debian 7. I looked in /v/l/m just now and I don't see anything
that looks like a login. Do you have greppable suggestion?

I see a lightdm log, maybe it's so light it fails to log properly...

I don't have auditd running.
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Re: wtmp/last weird behavior

[David Rysdam]

You replied only to me. I hope it isn't too gauche to reply to the
list. I like these things to be searchable by others in the future. (Ob:
http://xkcd.com/979/)

Bill Freeman  writes:
> But you are probably talking about an Xdm (gdm, kdm, etc.) login.  I'll bet
> that code works pretty well too.

Yes, I am. That's what I thought as well. It looks like wtmp is a
"standard" of fairly long-standing, so I'd expect it to work right.

> So I can think of two possibilities:
>
>   1. One kid is letting another kid just go  ahead and use the logged in
> session, rather than logging out and making the other log in.

Definitely not happening. And even if it were, it can't be happening
100% of the time. 'last' reports that one of the children hasn't logged
in *even once* since the 1st, even though I've watched him do it.

>   2. Some of them are using switch user, rather than logging out and
> logging in.  I don't know what happens to wtmp when you switch back to an
> existing session. If it doesn't make a wtmp entry, that might b e construed
> as a gdm bug (or whoever it is that offers "switch users").  Or not.  A
> case could be made that suspending and resuming a user's session does not
> constitute a log out and in.  Even if this is what's going on.

This definitely has happened, but as above not 100% of the time for any
given child. Maybe 1% of the time (their computer is right next to our
computers, so we see the nominal behavior).

> I think that you want a tool that prints the file in human readable form,
> whose output you can pipe into tail, or look at in your favorite editor, so
> that you can see the sequence.  If you can't find such a tool, the utmp
> wtmp man page gives a C structure for the entries in the file.  If you have
> the missing kid turn up as logged in for days at a time, it's probably the
> switch users thing.

I saw the layout, but since 'strings /var/log/wtmp' doesn't show the
child, I'm skeptical that a program will find it. I can try it. Or at
least read the structure a little more closely and see if the UID could
be in there. For one particular child. This month only.

> Another interesting diagnostic would be a tool that captures the last entry
> in wtmp to a private log of your own that you arrange to have run when they
> log in - .bash_profile and the X equivalent.

Maybe wtmp is getting overwritten? I guess that could be. I have no idea
how it's getting captured in the first place...
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wtmp/last weird behavior

[David Rysdam]

First, a disclaimer: Everything I know about wtmp/last I've learned in
the last 10 minutes. 

That said, it doesn't seem to be working as advertised. What am I not
understanding?

I have a computer that the children use. They each have their own login
which they use faithfully (passwords are secret) and, in the summer,
many times per day. So if I look at the output of 'last', I would expect
to see them all there. 

If I point 'last' at /var/log/wtmp (the default), one child is
missing. If I point 'last' at /var/log/wtmp.1 (rotated on the first of
the month), I see them all. Fact learned: No user is misconfigured to
not be logged somehow (needless to say I'm the only admin and I did
nothing.)

Theory: Maybe 'last' is just broken but the files are still OK.

If I do a 'strings /var/log/wtmp' and grep for each child individually,
*two* are missing. A third child has entries, but far fewer than I know
he has used the computer. (Seriously, we have a timer system to make
sure everyone gets reasonable turns and it is a HUGE DEAL around our
house--there's absolutely no way he only logged in 5 or 6 times this
month.)

It could be that /var/log/wtmp stores UIDs instead of names sometimes,
which would explain the 'strings ...| grep' discrepancy. But that
half-assed theory doesn't explain a lot of the facts and doesn't really
make much sense anyway.

What's going on here?
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Re: time for the annual Internet Speed Quest

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> I think FairPoint does have some service in NH that's analogous to
> FiOS, but I don't see any way to find out from their website how much
> it costs or whether it's even available in a given area. 

Yep. I know they have some kind of "high speed" service, but there's no
indication of how fast, how much or where. The website is a riddle
wrapped in an enigma.

It's sounding like the upshot is that I should try comcast. It actually
might not be that annoying to try, since I can leave my DSL alone until
I get the comcast working. 

What does the cable modem consist of? From a black-box POV, I assume
it's basically identical to a DSL modem. Magic on one side, CAT5
ethernet on the other. Plug my tomato-powered wireless router into that
side and away I go.
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Re: time for the annual Internet Speed Quest

[David Rysdam]

Chris Linstid  writes:
> So, I'm not sure if Milford has Comcast (pretty sure they do), but from a
> technical standpoint I generally recommend them.

No problem with a Linux-only home network? How about ssh tunneling in
via a dyndns-like service?
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Re: time for the annual Internet Speed Quest

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> Maybe *I'm* behind the times: I just assumed the reason anyone wants
> "faster Internet" is for downloading ISOs-- which obviously makes the
> issue bandwidth, not latency, unless your 'connection' is something
> like USPS 

This is my category of usage too, although not ISOs particularly. I dl a
couple Debian disks a year. But quite a few torrents, flash games (often
a big dl at the beginning, then small packets if any afterwards), YT
videos, new versions of Minecraft, phone apps (during installation),
etc.

Some streaming *music*, but latency is less of an issue there,
esp. since it isn't real-time. 
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Re: time for the annual Internet Speed Quest

[David Rysdam]

Susan Cragin  writes:
> I find that latency is a bigger issue than I thought, especially when
> watching real-time video like the Red Sox games.

This is one of the many reasons I don't watch streaming video, other
than YT.

Basically, I have 3-4 computers (distributed among 7 people) all using
the internet at once and it's a frequent case that 2 or more of them are
trying to DL something large at the same time.
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Re: time for the annual Internet Speed Quest

[David Rysdam]

John Abreau  writes:
> Internet "speed" is a conflation of two different things: bandwidth and
> latency. Merely increasing your bandwidth won't do anything to address
> problems with latency. If you combine both of these in your head and call
> it "speed", then you're setting yourself up for expensive disappointment.

I'm specifically looking for speed. Downloads, uploads, videos, etc. We
don't do any gaming or anything where latency is a big issue. 
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time for the annual Internet Speed Quest

[David Rysdam]

I'm on Fairpoint DSL in Milford. My measured down/up speed is about
3Mbps/.6Mbps. 

I remember hearing good things about G4 from this mailing list, but they
said: 

At 12000 feet from the CO, we would normally estimate speeds in the
5-6Mb. However it looks like your connection goes through FairPoint
equipment that our connections do not go through. Sorry we couldn't
help you.

Does anyone have more information about this? Does Milford have two
parallel sets of equipment only one of which G4 can use? Or do they mean
they just don't serve Milford?

I've been on Fairpoint's site to try to glean anything about anything
and there's basically no information there. They don't even say what
speeds or prices their existing products are at, let alone what
potential upgrades there are or anything about equipment. The bill just
says "HSI - Standard" which I assume means "High Speed Internet".

Are there any other options in Milford? Or is this equipment thing
limiting me? There's always cable, but my vague perception is that cable
internet sucks for several reasons. Maybe I'm behind the times.
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Re: gnhlug-discuss Digest, Vol 92, Issue 8

[David Rysdam]

David Ohlemacher  writes:
> If you're using LO on Linux, you likely will benefit from installing and
> using the MS core true type fonts in LO files saved in Office formats and
> shared with Windows users.

Good tip, thanks!
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Re: how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

Richard Kolb II  writes:
> I also picked up a 32gb usb drive, which I use to run linux on a laptop
> with a fried sata controller.  The issue I would see with sending your kids
> to school with an OS on a stick is that they might have been smart enough
> to disable booting off USB.

That's why I specified an emulator-based "live image" vs a bootable one.
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Re: how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

Derek Atkins  writes:
> Another option would be to export your LibreOffice Impress presentation to
> PDF, and then you can play it on any PDF Viewer.  Honestly, this is what I
> do when actually presenting slides on my Linux box -- I ask the other
> presenters to send me PDF instead of PPT.

That's what I do at work. And I guess that could work. Use LO locally at
home, via USB at school then export to PDF to hand in.

> I guess it all depends on how much you want to fight for your kids' right
> to use Linux?

Installing Windows is a non-starter for multiple reasons. That said, it
might actually be a feature that they can't work on these documents at
home very well. Encourages planning ahead to do it at school.
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Re: how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> Or, even easier, portable Libre Office running on Windows.  Then the data
> files are always Libre Office format on a USB drive.  Edit on Linux, edit
> on Windows, always running Libre Office.
>
> http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable/  I'd suggest
> doing this in any event.

Reading these links, I realized that this isn't going to work, at least
not with the cheap-o 128 GB drives. These things are pretty slow. I
probably want a smaller, USB 3.0 drive.

> However, I bet the school is teaching *PowerPoint*, not presentation
> software.  In which case the student is expected to provide a powerpoint
> that works on the school's system.  If that is the case, you should work
> out with the teacher how to do things at home.  Maybe LibreOffice on a
> thumb drive is ok.

In the computer class, they probably are teaching particular apps but I
*think* they always have time to work on them there in that case. For
other classes, they are usually handing in paper, well for the Word
situations anyway. I guess they must be displaying PPT on the computer,
as you say.

I guess that makes the entire project moot. NM.
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Re: how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

Patrick Flaherty  writes:
> Have you played with portable apps (http://portableapps.com/)? Libre office
> works on windows and linux. Past that, maybe something hosted (like google
> docs, but maybe a bit more Free).

This looks interesting, but I'm having trouble turning the "helpful",
dumbed-down descriptions into something I can actually understand. Oh, I
see Linux is supported "via Wine" so I guess they do a Windows-only
installation that you can use on any other Windows computers.

That's probably not quite what I want, since I think they'd want their
local Linux version and their school Windows version of LO to be the
same for various reasons. That said, it might be the easiest way to
figure out how to get a Windows installation of LO onto a USB drive with
everything in the right dirs and everything.
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Re: how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

David Hardy  writes:
> What comes to mind immediately, and this may not be workable for you in
> that situation;  why not a Tails USB stick with persistence enabled?

You started off in English and then trailed off. The last word I
understood was "a"...
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Re: how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

Derek Atkins  writes:
> a) Linux supports FATfs, so just use the USB drives as-is..  They usually
> come formatted in FAT.  This will work cross-platform.
>
> b) Why don't you use Open/LibreOffice at home?  That can export to Word,
> Excel, or PowerPoint as necessary.

Yes, this is the current situation I'm describing as a nightmare. Have
you actually tried to use both LibreOffice and PowerPoint, back and
forth, to edit the same document?
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how dumb is this idea?

[David Rysdam]

My kids and I are 100% Linux at home. (My wife has a Mac, which none of
us touch unless we absolutely have to.) At school, it is unfortunately
obvious the kids use Windows. Also, starting in middle school, the
school expects every kid to carry a USB drive back and forth so they can
work on projects.

I've had some problems providing support for this, to put it mildly. For
something like a paper, the solution is obvious: write in plain text and
dump into Word at the last minute. (The solution is obvious, but no
child of mine has listened to me yet. That's something I don't think
GNHLUG can help me with.) But for something like PowerPoint, the
solution isn't so obvious. They have to be able to edit it in both
places, during in-class work periods and as homework.

I don't know what the school expects people to do if they can't afford
Office at home.

However, I just had an idea. You can get 128GB USB drives on ebay for
~$20 now. Why not install an emulator-based (as opposed to bootable)
"live CD" image on there that they can then mount the rest of the USB
drive with and edit their work in Linux *even at school*?

They probably won't be able to get on the network with it, which is fine
since the host Windows OS could handle that. 

Transferring documents (for printing, say) may be a problem, although I
assume the live CD images somehow manage it. Oh wait, to reap the
benefit you'd have to print *from Linux* which probably won't work even
if you had the right printer driver set up. Well, print at home, I
guess.

I don't think security would be a problem unless there's now some way to
prevent someone from starting an app off their USB drive. 

The only real issue I can think of horsepower: Does the school hardware
have the oomph to support this hack? I'll have to ask my kids what the
school has.
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you like Lawrence Lessig, right?

[David Rysdam]

Well, he's at it again:

https://mayone.us/
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HackExeter

[David Rysdam]

Link:

http://www.hackexeter.com/

My son heard about this somewhere, probably from the computer club at
school. It looks pretty neat, but a pretty long day if you include
driving at both ends (I'm in Milford). Wondering if anyone knows
anything else about it.

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Re: Files <-> Samsung Galaxy S4

[David Rysdam]

Ben Scott  writes:
>   Aside from coping general documents, photos, etc., back and forth, I
> have a large collection of MP3 files on my desktop that I want to keep
> in sync on my handheld -- adds, changes, *and* deletes.  rsync does a
> fine job of this on a filesystem.

Then use rsync.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.kowalczuk.rsync4android

Interface is a little clunky but works great for me. I've never rooted
my phone or plugged it into anything but a wall socket.
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Re: "modern" KVM that works?

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> * it's running a GUI, in which case one can use x2x, VNC,
>   x2vnc, Synergy, or some combination thereof (depending on
>   what OS the _other_ computer is running, and how many
>   monitors are available) and just connect to the raspberry pi
>   over the network; or:

Well, I never did the network because I've never found it that helpful
to add layers of technology to experiments.

> * it's not running a GUI, in which case one can use a serial
>   cable (and a terminal window on the other computer).
>
> If the raspberry pi is not even running an OS, that'd presumably fit
> into my "not running a GUI" category; and I'd sort-of expect someone
> who's "getting hardware-trained" or "wants to write an OS from scratch"
> to get experience using a serial console anyway.

The "hardware-trained" doesn't mean "low-level". It means "able to hook
up basic hardware like keyboards."

However, the serial console is a good point. I may even have a
serial-to-USB cable around here. I'm not really clear on what the Pi has
to be able to do to bring the serial to life, but presumably about as
much, or less, as it does to bring the SD card to life before booting.
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Re: "modern" KVM that works?

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> Try as I might, I can't seem to get past it: I'm surprised to see
> "raspberry pi" and "KVM" mentioned together. What are you doing with
> the raspberry pi?

I'm not doing anything with it. My 15 year old got one for Xmas a year
ago and is doing various things. Currently he wants to write an
operating system from scratch.

But why are "Pi" and "KVM" a surprising pair?
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Re: "modern" KVM that works?

[David Rysdam]

Tom Buskey  writes:
> If you're buying a new TV, it's going to be HDMI.

Well that's exactly my point. If can buy a new TV, why are you spending
only $35 on a computer?
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Re: "modern" KVM that works?

[David Rysdam]

Richard Kolb II  writes:
> Not that it matters, but I use a 12v composite video monitor with my pi.  I
> even upgraded from the 4.3" to 7".

I guess that must be what the target demographic is supposed to use. I
never got the "kids in poor countries" + HDMI. 
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Re: "modern" KVM that works?

[David Rysdam]

Jerry Feldman  writes:
> The two vendors I avoid like the plague are IOGear and Belkin. 

I see Richard gave me a link to a StarTech. I don't know IOGear, but I
thought Belkin was OK back in the day. I should have come here first.

> That said other than that, one feature you want to explore is how to
> switch from 1 system to the other. The belkin I had at work gave be
> terrible video and I could not use their auto switch
> capability. Bought one from Cable and Wireless. It worked find and got
> good resolution videa. But every KVM has a different way to switch.

This is a very good point. This IOGear wasn't bad, since its default
switch was to press scroll-lock twice (I've never seen any application
ever that used scroll-lock for anything, so that should be
safe). However, the other mode was to press ctrl twice. Horrors, for an
emacs user.

All of this is complicated by me not doing a lot of the gruntwork
myself. I'm trying to get my 15-year-old programmer hardware-trained and
I frequently find that the most basic instruction ("try booting it when
you're set to that KVM input") somehow ends up with breaking out
needlenose pliers to fix a connector

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"modern" KVM that works?

[David Rysdam]

Back in my day we had it bad. Uphill to school, analog phones, etc. But
our KVMs were simple AB hardware switches and we liked it, by gum.

Today, I'm trying to hook up a VGA-only desktop and an HDMI-only
Raspberry Pi to a VGA/DVI monitor with USB keyboard and mouse.

Many options, but I eventually decided on a combination HDMI->VGA
converter (powered and active) and this KVM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817107417

Forget about the Pi and the converter for a minute, because just the KVM
won't work right.

If you boot the computer up "normally" (i.e. no KVM in the loop) and
then connect the KVM, it works great. If you boot up with the KVM in the
loop, the screen goes into power save right before/as the video card
goes into graphics mode. After a series of experiments, it has been
determined that gdm3 is not really running there, but it does pop up if
you switch the KVM out the loop without powering down. Putting the KVM
back in the loop then and it works as expected.

I don't know much about what happens between the normal bootup and when
gdm starts running (this is on Debian 6), but I'm guessing there's a
hardware detect going on that the KVM is failing to negotiate. Any
ideas?

(As I was writing this email, I realized I could use a KVM just for the
K&M and let the dual input monitor handle the two Vs. But that would
require two "switching actions" for the user, so I'd rather get this
thing working if I can.)
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Re: How to sync Android and Emacs BBDB addressbooks?

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> How do I go about reconciling? I'd really like to have my contacts
> just synchronised between BBDB and my Android addressbook. Is
> that possible? How?

There's an Org-Mode app for Android that might do what you want. It
syncs your desktop org file with the phone one. If you can wrap BBDB up
in Org-Mode somehow

Alternatively, I have rsync running on my Android (cyanogen-less) to my
computer. That plus a little script-glue will probably do what you want.
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Re: Taming NetworkManager's/GNOME's Wi-FI SSID list?

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> I'm not going to bother asking what the point is of publicly advertising
> private resources...

You didn't ask, but I'm still going to note that this seems like asking
why so many private driveways are connected to the public street or why
private phone numbers are published in a book sent to everyone. Because
the people for whom they are intended still have to see/get to them?
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Re: SSH timeout on password challenge.

[David Rysdam]

Ken D'Ambrosio  writes:
> establish, NOT for when a password challenge happens.  My script is 
> using the timeout command:
>
> timeout 5 ssh -n $host 'blahblahblah'
>
> Any bright ideas on how to do this gracefully?

How is this the first I've ever heard of 'timeout'? I would have
resorted to 'expect' by this time. That may still help you out here, but
maybe it's doing the same thing 'timeout' does and won't work any
better.
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Re: google voice dropping XMPP

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> And this all reminds me..., I liked this comment that I recently found,
> by Daniel Bo :
>
>"I'm still confused as to why Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google don't
> agree amongst themselves to use their own services + XMPP + some
> plugins to openly replicate Facebook and immediately become big
> players in the social business. When your competition is eclipsing
> you like FB is, you need to start making some hard choices. There's
> no collusion if it's an open platform, right? Old and slow. Old and
> slow."

In what field does FB compete with MS, Yahoo or Google? (And in what
field does Yahoo compete at all?)
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Re: Most WiFi broken??

[David Rysdam]

virgins...@vfemail.net writes:
> But here's the odd part: this same exact setup works fine with some
> other public WiFi (I'd guess about 1 in 5), and works just fine with
> every access point that I've set up myself (usually OpenWRT on Linksys
> WRT-series routers).  Silly me... following standards and all.

I've actually had a similar problem. In my case, it was a B/G thing. I
can't remember the details, unfortunately, but the deal was basically
like yours: I can connect to some (in my case, most) WiFi points but not
others *including the one inside my house*.

That's if I put the router in "G, with B emulated" (or whatever tomato
calls it) mode. If I go in "true B" mode, I can connect fine.

On a road trip last year, I was UNable to connect to about 1 in 5 access
points. The error output was singularly unhelpful, so I made zero
progress in figuring anything out. I don't know if those hotels had the
same "emulated B" thing going on or if it was a standards thing or what.

This was Linux Mint (whatever the latest was in summer of 2012) on some
unknown but quite old laptop hardware.
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Re: DoS attacks on Healthcare.gov...

[David Rysdam]

Tyson Sawyer  writes:
> What is the "open source action" that she refers to and can be found
> in the description of the segment?  Is the meaning of "open source"
> being changed by some groups?

She might be garbling a little. In the intelligence community, "open
source" means "we didn't have Mata Hari anything, we found it from
websites, books, newspapers", etc. Open sources.

So she could be trying to say: "We know from open sources that at least
one group is trying to DoS us" meaning something like "There is a group
out there with the stated, public mission to try to DoS us" or "A recent
newspaper investigation found a hacking group that blah blah blah" etc.
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Re: SATA card-reader unusable after eject? (was: Nashua LUG and linux question)

[David Rysdam]

"Marc Nozell (m...@nozell.com)"  writes:
> Why not just use the 'unmount' button from nautilus rather than 'safely
> remove'?  That is really want you want.

So this brings up a related question for me: I stick my backup USB drive
into the slot. Nothing is mounted, but I see the device listed in
Thunar. I click that and it is mounted.

But I don't want to have to click the GUI so I can go back to the
command line and do my thing. Why doesn't it (where "it" is probably
"XFCE" in this case) just mount it, if it already knows everything it
needs to know and only lacks a click?

Oh and speaking of terrible default behavior, I'm once again bitten by
the bug (yes, I consider it a bug) that local users without root access
can't shut down Debian. And this time, there are hundreds of solutions,
none of which apply. G.
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Re: I see GNU Make 4.0 is out

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> David Rysdam  writes:
> In the mean time:
>
> 
> http://smalltalk.gnu.org/blog/bonzinip/all-you-should-really-know-about-autoconf-and-automake

10 lines on how to use it if everything works isn't that
helpful. Where's the "decoding your 10k line auto-generated shell script
to figure out why it can't find the 32 bit libs" or whatever?
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Re: I see GNU Make 4.0 is out

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> And, now that you've got Guile in your make, you just need
> to put a make into your Guile:
>
>  http://gna.org/projects/conjure

My question is, if the build system is now turing-complete, when can
automake die?
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I see GNU Make 4.0 is out

[David Rysdam]

This:

http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Guile-Function

caused me to say this:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xzibit-yo-dawg
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Re: Teaching little kids to program: via board games

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> In case you guys missed it, there's a board-game project
> up on kickstarter right now called "Robot Turtles",
> designed to `sneakily' teach little kids (3-8 years old)
> programming fundamentals:

Awesome. Not so much "sneaky" as separating computers from computer
science.
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Re: sound over VNC to osx?

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> And you want Mac sounds triggered by non-X11 Mac applications,
> running on the remote Mac, to be captured and relayed over the network
> and played on your local Linux laptop's speakers. Right?

Right. 

> If you were running `unix programs' on the Mac, I think I'd be
> able to offer you a solution. `Screen-scraping the audio from Mac OS'
> is out of my domain, but it looks like there's at least the beginnings
> of a solution here:
>
> 
> http://superuser.com/questions/25868/how-to-transfer-audio-output-from-mac-os-x-to-ubuntu-via-a-network

A Mac-expert relative of mine also mentioned Airfoil. I'll look at these
and see if they are quick and easy. However, I gently broke the news to
my wife that sound might not work on the remote computer and she said
"So? I always turn it way down anyway because I don't like sound."

I still think it might be inconvenient not to have ANY sound (email
BINGs, youtube videos, etc) but at least it isn't a disaster.
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Re: sound over VNC to osx?

[David Rysdam]

David Rysdam  writes:
> Long story short, I'm trying to VNC from a Linux laptop (client) to an
> OSX desktop (server). 

Wait. Maybe I got that backward, given the non-obvious client/server
terminology from X.

I want to sit at the Linux laptop and be seeing the OSX screen. 
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sound over VNC to osx?

[David Rysdam]

Long story short, I'm trying to VNC from a Linux laptop (client) to an
OSX desktop (server). Graphically, no problem, other than the fact I
need a bigger monitor on the client side.

But I'm not getting any sound on the client end. I tried a couple
different software clients and two different hardware clients. Then I
RTFM and realized VNC itself doesn't support sound. Tried a client that
claimed to have some kind of built-in support (via ssh?), but that
didn't work either.

As I'm typing this, I'm realizing that anything a smart client wants to
do would have to be supported by the server sending it, which OSX
probably isn't.

Has anyone else done this?
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Re: Crowdfunding an Ubuntu smartphone (right now)

[David Rysdam]

Chris Linstid  writes:
> I really wanted to be interested and excited about it, but a phone with its
> UI coming from the folks who gave us Unity and it's $800? Uh, no thanks.

Exactly. Plus, I have not been impressed with the *computing* available
in handheld devices. Input seems to be the big problem. It's enough to
control a video or play simple games, but anything requiring more than
one finger? No way.

And I just don't get enough phone calls to need my phone to be any
smarter than have a contact list.
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Re: Crowdfunding an Ubuntu smartphone (right now)

[David Rysdam]

Joshua Judson Rosen  writes:
> Just in case not everybody saw this on Slashdot already:
>
> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge
>
> "The Ubuntu Edge is the next generation of personal computing:
>  smartphone and desktop PC in one state-of-the-art device."

I was already skeptical based on Shuttleworth being involved and it
costing $800, but that video easily pushed me over the edge. 

He literally comes out and says we are a testbed for his production
facility...but still wants us to pay almost a grand a head for the
privilege. Don't Formula One drivers get paid? Which one of us is the
millionaire, here?
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Re: Password storage?

[David Rysdam]

TARogue  writes:
> I use a piece of paper.

I use an semi-randomized algorithm with a seed of my own brain.
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