by Zaptoid | Apr 12, 2016 | Site Related
Wow man, it has been ages since I contributed in any way towards my blog. I suppose it cannot be called a blog as a blog gets updated. This, I’m afraid, has not been the case with my little home on the web.
I’ve updated the back end of WordPress to the latest version and while I was at it, I realized that the theme I was using would have looked good back in my younger days or, worse yet, the days of Geocities. In light of that, an update and change was needed. I scratched deep & hard, not to mention thought about it for quite some time(about 3 minutes) and decided on dropping all fancy crap and instead go with a smooth, responsive and open look.
I might, at some point, decide to add more images and perhaps a real logo but until that day decides to roll in, this will be the future. If I’m really honest with myself I can admit that the old logo looked horrible. I’m not even sure if you can call it a “logo” by today’s standards. Heh, what a flop.
Work has been insanely busy lately. But busy in the best sense of the word: Toys. I’ve been getting new toys every week and have been worse than a kid at Xmas. I have been actively involved in the Raspberry Pi scene and with that came some really interesting projects.
But, more of that in a while.
by Zaptoid | Aug 18, 2014 | HowTo
Yes, I’ve been playing. Here’s another handy little tip.
See, I initially used Midori browser but the friggin’ thing kept on crashing no matter what I did. After trying a couple of tweaks it kept on playing the memory leak game(Midori has the memory leak, not me) so I figured stuff it and slapped on Chromium.
Step 1
Install chromium, x11-xserver-utils and unclutter:
sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install chromium x11-xserver-utils unclutter
Install some fonts to make it a little more sexy:
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
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by Zaptoid | Aug 18, 2014 | HowTo
This solution works but there are a few seconds of text shown before the boot image appears.
Install fbi
sudo apt-get install fbi
Copy the splashscreen image to be used
Copy your custom splash image into: /etc/ and name it “splash.png“.
Presumably the resolution to use is 1920x1080px.
Create A Script
sudo nano
Paste the following into the text editor:
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: asplashscreen
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:
# Default-Start: S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Show custom splashscreen
# Description: Show custom splashscreen
### END INIT INFO
do_start () {
/usr/bin/fbi -T 1 -noverbose -a /etc/splash.png
exit 0
}
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by Zaptoid | Apr 30, 2014 | Arb, Technologhy
Raspberry Pi is a computer the size of a credit card that’s so simple, anyone can program it. Designed as an introduction to science, technology, engineering, and math for UK grade schoolers, its $35 price tag has made it appealing to hobbyists all over the world.
Despite its diminutive device, Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to process many of the same programs as PCs, from word processors to games. Its small size also makes Raspberry Pi ideal for programming connected home devices—like the aforementioned print server, which has given us the power to make every computer, laptop, and cell phone in our network printer-compatible.
The Story Of Raspberry Pi
Eben Upton first came up with the idea for Raspberry Pi in 2006, when he and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory were frustrated by the dwindling number of students, and the poor skill levels of those students, entering the program.
While current students entering the program often had Web design experience, programming experience was becoming very rare. Upton’s concern? That the price and sophistication of modern computers had made them overly complicated for kids to experiment with.
In the ’70s and ’80s, kids could use an Amiga or Commodore 64 to boot into a programming environment. In later decades, Upton speculated, parents had more reason to forbid the same kind of experimentation on increasingly advanced family PCs. Plus, as computers became easier to use, programming them became more complicated, and tinkering with their inner workings became far less necessary.
Upton wanted to create a cheap, easily programmable computer that would bring back the experimental spirit of an earlier era of computing, by making a device cheap enough so anyone could tamper with it without fear of expensive mistakes. From 2006 to 2008, the official history goes, Upton and his colleagues worked on the prototype that would eventually become the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation was established in May 2009, and the first shipment of Raspberry Pis became available in April 2012.
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by Zaptoid | Apr 30, 2014 | HowTo, Unix/Linux
Once again, if your ISP already gives you a static IP address, you don’t need to worry about this section.
We’ve already set up a static internal IP address for the Raspberry Pi, which means computers inside your local network will always know where to find your Pi. But what about projects that require Raspberry Pi to be connected to the Internet? If you want to build a Web server with your Raspberry Pi, people outside your network need to know where your Pi lives, which means setting a public IP that always looks the same.
I say “looks the same” because we’re really setting up a pseudo-static IP. Your ISP will continue to change the address as usual. So every time somebody connects to your Pi, the script we’re about to write will say, “Looks like the Pi has moved! Let me redirect you to the new address.”
We do this with a Dynamic DNS (DDNS), which maintains a name server that gets updated in real-time, and DDClient, a program that will correspond with DDNS directly from your Pi.
First sign up for a free dynamic host service like DNS Dynamic. Follow the instructions and create a new nameserver like Yourserver.dnsdynamic.com.
Now go to the command line on your Raspberry Pi and install DDClient with the following line:
sudo apt-get install ddclient
We need to edit the DDClient configuration with our DDNS’s new name server:
sudo nano /etc/ddclient/ddclient.conf
Every service will have slightly different configuration, but the DDNS website should tell you what you need to do to configure this file. A standard configuration for DNS Dynamic, for example, goes like this. Copy and paste it in.
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