<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"><channel> <title>norris'gopherspace</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/users/norris/</link> <description>An old linux user rambling on about linux, FOSS, and other geekery.</description> <item> <title>10 14 0157_SID_TO_ARCH.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-10-14-0157_SID_TO_ARCH.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.10.14 TIME : 01:57 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : SID TO ARCH =================================================================== I've been using debian linux since 1995; when I say using, I mean at least one machine in my house has been running debian constantly during that entire time, be it a server install running stable, a laptop or desktop computer for the wife or one of my daughters running stable, or maybe testing, and always my personal daily driver laptop running sid. So when I changed my two personal daily driver laptops (not any of my servers or other family member's computers) from debian sid to arch linux this past July, it could be asked, why arch and why now? I know and love debian. It works, I know all the ins and outs, and it has never once broken, failed to update, or let me down in any memorable way; these are the reasons debian is the only distro I would ever install on a server. Debian is not just for servers; debian is everything anybody needs, meaning if you need stable they have you covered, if you need more recent, less "stale" programs, they have that covered as well, and if you need the latest and greatest, then they have that too! If you want a minimal install, or a full fledged out of the box, everything included, just works distro, you have those options too. And no matter what you need, they have security covered too. Installing packages from the appropriate official repo, no matter stable, testing, or sid, you can rest easy knowing that security has been handled appropriately. Debian sid is often called a rolling release, and it's accurate to do so; outside of the freeze before a stable release, debian sid is constantly being updated. Other than that, if one sticks to the official repos, and doesn't mix repos, just about everything you could possibly need is there, and can be safely downloaded and installed with almost zero unexpected gotchas to be had. So why even try something new? Was there an itch that debian sid wasn't scratching for me? The short and only answer to the question is that for my personal daily driver computers running sid, I have been for years maintaining a list (paper and electronic) of packages that were installed from source and outside of the standard sid repos. The itch that arch seemed to scratch that debian sid does not, is a solution for installing packages outside of the standard repos using the package manager. Debian doesn't do this as easily, and more times than not, it's easier to just build and install from source. With arch however, using the aur, and the pkgbuild system, everything on my lists of things installed outside the package manager on debain sid, could be installed using the package manager and the aur. Is it perfect? Is it safer? No to both questions. The aur doesn't feel as safe or secure as debian for sure; but it is just a safe as installing from source on sid, if you take the time to read the source --which is something you should be doing every time you install anything from source. The main advantage with arch and the aur is that you can install from source using the package manager. So, for me it's a win: if something is not in the official arch repos, and it's in the aur (which everything on my lists were) I can install it with the package manger, which with arch is a superior user experience. Just from a more nebulous aspect though, having things installed more close to source (less patches than with debian binaries) my system seems a little more lean--it's a feel thing but it seems a little more lean and a little more snappy. One of the things I really enjoy about a debian sid install is the minimal netinstall, arch does this in spades, as you only install what you need and you only enable or start the services you need as well. With arch I feel more in control of every detail of my system. Overall I am very happy replacing debian sid with arch, and I don't regret anything about it. YMMV --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>03 13 1659_PEN_AND_PAPER.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-03-13-1659_PEN_AND_PAPER.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.03.13 TIME : 16:59 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : PEN AND PAPER =================================================================== Nothing earth shattering to see here, just a overdue, short post about two things that I have carried with me everyday since since graduating college in 1989: a pen and some kind of pocket notebook. It really started earlier than that though, around 5th grade; I evidently was lying about the amount of homework I had, and my mom made me carry a notebook that I was to use to write down everything that I had to do. She probably had the teacher sign it too; I can’t remember the details, but it worked, and I have used and carried notebooks ever since. In school I would carry it my bag, but since then it has resided in my back pocket. I take notes on my computer too of course. I have used a variety of apps in the past; I am currently using a combination of Vim, Joplin, syncthing, git, and nextcloud. Notes stored on my computer are more often for procedural or repetitive task, or things that I may want to copy and paste. In most cases these digital notes are as important to me as config files, and other things I routinely back up, but the pen and paper notes server a different purpose, and are also just quicker, easier, and more convenient. My analog notes tend to be more list-like in nature, compared to the ones I keep on my computer, and almost never need to be digitized, as they are a mainly a complementary supplement to my digital note taking. Since graduating college and entering the work force, I have used a variety of pocket sized notebooks, spiral bound flip books, pads of paper in a cover, pocket calendars, and day-timers; but for the last 20 years or so, I can say that of all the pen and paper solutions I have carried, the best I have found is simply this: a Fisher Bullet Space Pen coupled with 3.5“x 5.5” dotted, memo books, carried in a leather cover. What I love about this notebook, is that the leather cover makes it very durable and comfortable to carry in my back pocket, and it can hold 3, 64 page notebooks. In one leather cover I can carry one notebook for long term work-related things, one for mostly linux-related things, and one for archived material from the previous year. The Fisher Bullet Space Pen is almost indestructible. The one I carry now, I found near my driveway after losing it for over a year. It had been run over by a car and exposed to the elements and still serves as my everyday pen. It’s not the best writing pen, but it is small and comfortable, and easily carried. It may seem trivial, or an insignificant geeky thing, but my pen and paper pocket notebook make me happy. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>02 07 1427_MY_GEMINI_CAPSULE_HAS_LAUNCHED.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-02-07-1427_MY_GEMINI_CAPSULE_HAS_LAUNCHED.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><, has a really good post about what makes gemini intriguing. [post]: https://samsai.eu/post/introduction-to-gemini/ Much like gopher, except way more modern, you will need a gemini client to view gemini content. Here is a list of clients, proxies, and servers that can be used with gemini. [list]: https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini If you don’t have a gemini client yet, you can use the gemini portal to access gemini capsules with a web browser. [gemini portal]: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/ There is not a lot of information on the web about it, but Project Gemini, and of course wikipedia, have a little more information if you are interested in learning more. [Project Gemini]: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ [wikipedia]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) Special thanks to [@ecliptik](https://fosstodon.org/@ecliptik) and his _scripts repository. [_scripts repository]: https://github.com/ecliptik/ecliptik.github.io/tree/master/_scripts --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 31 0555_FOSSTODON.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-31-0555_FOSSTODON.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.31 TIME : 05:55 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : FOSSTODON =================================================================== I have posted before at about my experiences in the linux and FOSS community, and specifically about getting in, fitting in, taking part in, and later dropping out of the community. Since the recent rebirth of this dormant website, I have revisited mastodon, and logged back in to my fosstodon account again for the first time. I say the first time because I honestly cannot remember the last time I had logged in, but thankfully bitwarden had my password. In the short two week period, at the time of this writing, that I have been back on fosstodon, I can say it has been enjoyable and eye opening. Mastodon is an open source, and Free as in freedom, privacy respecting, own your data, social network server and micro blogging platform. All mastodon servers can communicate with each other on a federated network of decentralized servers; this means that if you are have an account on one server, or instance, you can communicate with all users on the server you are on, as well as users on other servers. Additionally, mastodon is part of the larger fediverse and can communicate with the other non-mastodon parts of the fediverse too. That is the short and sweet, oversimplified explanation of what mastodon is. If you want to know why you should use mastodon, please read the post by @codesections: ~~~~~ at https://www.codesections.com/blog/mastodon-elevator-pitch/ ~~~~~ about how and why mastodon is better than twitter; he is one of the moderators of the fosstodon mastodon instance, and he says it better than I ever could. So, after that brief, what, how, and why, I will get back to the main purpose of the this post, and continue to gush a little about the fosstodon mastodon instance. One of the things I love about mastodon and it being federated, is that the instance you choose to have an account with can, if you find the right instance, really feel like a community. What I mean by that is if you are a Free and open source linux geek, the fosstodon instance will feel like home for you. The fosstodon instance is filled with people who care about linux, Free and open source software, and all the various and sundry geeky/nerdy things that those people are passionate about. If you are passionate about something, being surrounded by, and communicating with, people who are passionate about the same things, puts you in an environment that both liberates and fosters a healthy, fun, and engaging community. I am living proof that, even someone like me who has suffered from occasional impostor's syndrome, can, and will, be accepted into the linux and Free and open source software community. The fosstodon instance is a place for people like me; an exciting, and engaging place that allows anyone and everyone that is passionate about these things to get in , fit in, and take part in, an accepting community that feels like home. Fosstodon, being just one instance of the larger mastodon federated network, isn't a particularity small instance with over 15,000 users (and don't forget you can still communicate with the other instances), but it still feels like a community, as well connected part of a larger unique part of the internet. And that is because it is part of the fediverse, the larger universe made up of all the federated networks, that in addition to mastodon include diaspora, Friendica, GNU Social, Hubzilla, Misskey, PeerTube, Pleroma, Pixelfed, Funkwhale, and possibly more. Together, all of these decentralized networks of federated servers make up the larger fediverse. It is a small-feeling, interconnected corner of the internet, that isn't controlled by giant companies that mine your data for their profits. It sort of reminds me of the internet before the web became the way it is today; it somehow reminds me of gopher space and BBSs, when the internet felt, in a good way, smaller--but more connected. I told you I was gonna gush. None of this is rocket science, and it may not even be that eye-opening for most people reading this, but I have had my eyes opened, again, by the linux and Free and open source software community. Thanks fosstodon. If you don't have a home on mastodon yet, and especially, if you are passionate about FOSS and linux, just click the link below to sign up for an account on the fosstodon instance: Join fosstodon at https://fosstodon.org/invite/XrJRievw And if fosstodon doesn't sound like home to you, being able to pick ~~~~~ at https://instances.social/ ~~~~~ or even host at ~~~~~ at https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon ~~~~~ your own instance are just two more reasons that make mastodon, and the fediverse at ~~~~~ at https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse ~~~~~ so awesome. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 29 1143_WELCOME_TO_THE_MODCAST.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-29-1143_WELCOME_TO_THE_MODCAST.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.29 TIME : 11:43 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : WELCOME TO THE MODCAST =================================================================== Shortly after I set up my gopher hole last year, I downloaded all of the MOD files off of http://artscene.textfiles.com/music/mods/ thinking I would mirror them on my gopher site. I decided not to once I had finished the 54 gig download of over 140,000 MOD files. The directory structure of the downloaded files was going to make it a little cumbersome to be useful on a gopher site. As an aside, I can't remember the exact details, but I pretty sure I used wget, or maybe it was curl, to grab the files; either way it was easy. I kept the files and have enjoyed listening to them as background music on several occasions since then. But wait, what are MOD files? MOD is short for module, and paraphrased from wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOD_(file_format) is a file format, first developed for the Amiga computer in 1987, and is mainly used to represent music. A MOD file (including files with the extension MOD, XM, IT, 669, MTM, and S3M) contains a set of instruments in the form of samples and a number of patterns indicating how and when the samples are played. More information about MOD files can be found at the alt.binaries.sounds.mods FAQ at http://cd.textfiles.com/darkdomain/faqs/faq-mod_v28-part1.txt, retrieved and stored at http://textfiles.com. All that aside, MOD files are both plenty fun and geeky; I have fond memories of editing MOD files back in the day, changing the instrument samples and completely changing the sound of the music. And you can still do that today with with the MOD tracking program MilkyTracker found at https://milkytracker.org/about/. So, back to the story, a couple of day ago I decided I would stream a randomly shuffled, continuous playlist of 140,129 MOD files. That's a lot of MOD files; 309 days, 6 hours, 2 minutes, and 48 seconds worth of mod files to be exact! With this many files, there are sure to be some that are not your cup of tea, but there will plenty of good ones too. So, if you feel so inclined, tune in and give it a listen. I can pretty much guarantee you won't hear the same song twice in 309 day of continuous listening. Just paste the following stream address in your media player of choice: http://lottalinuxlinks.com:8000/stream.m3u I don't know for sure how much my daily internet usage will affect the stream quality, but I know there will be times when the stream is less than ideal. I really don't think this is going to blow up the internet or anything like that, but if it gets to be a hassle bandwidth wise (or even if it doesn't), there is a decent chance that I may end up moving the stream to a slot on SDF's anonradio at https://anonradio.net/listen/ or maybe tilderadio at https://tilderadio.org/. We'll see what happens. tl;dr: I set up a pretty awesome internet audio stream at https://lottalinuxlinks.com/modcast/ of over 140,000 MOD files --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 20 1500_I3_SCRATCHPAD_AND_VIM_LIKE_MARKS.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-20-1500_I3_SCRATCHPAD_AND_VIM_LIKE_MARKS.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.20 TIME : 15:00 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : I3 SCRATCHPAD AND VIM LIKE MARKS =================================================================== I've been using linux a LONG time, and without a doubt the best and most versatile graphical environment I have ever used is the i3 tiling window manger. Technically I use a fork called i3-gaps, but I will talk about that in another post one day. What makes i3 the best (for me) is that it fits the way I work, is easily customized, and that all the navigation can be done with the keyboard. Two really cool features of i3 are the scratchpad and vim like marks. The scratchpad is a place you can send floating windows where you can quickly retrieve them when needed. Think of it sort of like minimizing a window--except that with i3 windows are not minimized. i3 is a tiling window manager and all windows are by default opened in the largest dimensions possible. If a window is the only window opened on a workspace, then it is maximized; and if any more windows are opened on that workspace they are tiled to take up half the space of the previously opened window on that workspace. Any tiled window can be turned into a floating window (and toggled back into a tiled window) with the following keystroke (where the mod key is either set to the windows key or the alt key, depending on your i3 config file--in my case I have the mod key set to the windows key and mod1 set to the alt key): ~~~~~ mod+shift+space ~~~~~ mod+shift+space is a toggle, meaning repeating the keystroke will disable floating for the window and return it to a tiling window. Once a window is turned into a floating window it can be sent to the scratchpad like this: ~~~~~ mod+shift+minus ~~~~~ Technically, you don't have to turn a window into a floating window before you send it the scratchpad; i3 does that for you when you send something to the scratchpad. mod+shift+minus will send any window, whether it is tiled, tabbed, or floating to the scratchpad; but any window that is retrieved from the scratchpad is brought back as a floating window. When a window is sent to the scratchpad it disappears. Like I said, it is sort of like minimizing a window, except that status bars in i3 show workspace numbers, not windows; that means that there is no status bar indicator showing where that window went. What good is a disappearing window if you can't bring it back? Any window sent to the scratchpad can be retrieved like this: ~~~~~ mod+minus ~~~~~ What makes this cool is that you can take any window that you don't need right now, and set it aside, out of the way, until you need it again, and then bring it right back to the front, where and when you need it. You can even configure programs to start in a floating window that is sent straight to the scratchpad at start up. I have my i3 config file set up to automatically start the RPN calculator orpie, and a urxvt terminal window opened in a floating window and sent to the scratchpad as soon as I start i3. In the case of urxvt, my config file has this in it: ~~~~~ exec --no-startup-id urxvt -name scratchterm for_window [instance="scratchterm"] move scratchpad ~~~~~ What if you decide that you no longer want a program to be in the scratchpad? Simply retrieve it from the scratchpad (mod+minus), and do a mod+shift+space to return it to a tiled window. Once you have sent several windows to the scratchpad, you can bring them back with a mod+minus; this will bring them back one (and only one) at a time in a cycling sequence based on the order that they were sent to the scratchpad. What that means is, if you have eight windows in the scratchpad, you will have to repeat the mod+minus keystroke until the one you are looking for cycles back around. This can become a little bit of a time waster, and that is where vim like marks come in. Why are they called vim like marks? Marks in vim allow you to record your current position so that you can return to it later. In i3 marks can be applied to windows that allow you to directly jump to a specific window. In the case of windows that don't reside in the scratchpad, going to a marked window will switch to the appropriate workspace and focus the marked window. That is cool enough all by itself, but combined with the scratchpad, it gets even better. I avoided using marks for a while, because I have i3 configured to not draw window decorations (title bars and borders), and I though this meant I couldn't use marks. I have since found out two things, marks do not have to be drawn on window decorations to use then, and i3 can even be configured to not show marks in window decorations. So, how do you use marks, and what makes using them so great coupled with the scratchpad? The way I use marks in i3 is by using the i3-input tool to assign a mark to a window that can be used to retrieve that specific window from the scratchpad. This allows me to assign a keystroke to mark a window and another to later go to that marked window whenever I choose. Simply adding the following to your i3 config file will do the trick: ~~~~~ # read 1 character and mark the current window with this character bindsym $mod+m exec i3-input -F 'mark %s' -l 1 -P 'Mark: ' # read 1 character and go to the window with the character bindsym $mod+g exec i3-input -F '[con_mark="%s"] focus' -l 1 -P 'Goto: ' ~~~~~ With this, when I type mod+m the i3-input tool will open a one line terminal to accept input, and I can mark the focused window with a one character mark. Then, I can send that window to the scratchpad with all the other windows that are already there. Later I can just type mod+g and then input the one character mark I assigned, and boom, the marked window is retrieved from the scratchpad. I didn't have to type mod+minus, 8 times to cycle through the scratchpad windows until I found it. That's just the way I use the scratchpad with marks, and that just scratches the surface (see what I did there?). You can configure i3 to move containers and windows to a mark, use marks with a window's class and title (or named instance like I used in the urxvt example above) to jump to a specific window, and marks can be be replaced removed and even toggled. Scratching the itch where x marks the spot is something that should never be typed in a phlog. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 18 1731_CHECKRESTART_AND_NEEDRESTART.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-18-1731_CHECKRESTART_AND_NEEDRESTART.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.18 TIME : 17:31 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : CHECKRESTART AND NEEDRESTART =================================================================== I saw a toot on mastodon today talking about the program checkrestart. checkrestart, which is part of the debian-goodies package, can check and see which processes need to be restarted after an upgrade. So why is this cool, what does it do, and is it worth installing? Well, in general linux machines get a lot of updates, but don't need to be rebooted very often. When the ratio of updates to required reboots is high, as it is especially in the case of debian sid, there are going to be times where services may still use old libraries after doing a apt upgrade. Running checkrestart as su will list what processes and services are still using old versions of new files. It will also list the total number of processes, the number of distinct programs and packages affected, and if any of these contain systemd definitions or init scripts that can be used to restart them. Looking into checkrestart, and installing and running it, led me to finding out about a package, that was inspired by checkrestart, called needrestart. needrestart checks which daemons need to be restarted after library upgrades. needrestart, in addition to scanning processes, will scan containers, interpreter based-daemons (Java, Perl, Python, Ruby), processor microcode upgrades for Intel CPUs, and the kernel, for cases where outdated libraries are being run, and even if there are any user sessions where outdated binaries are being run. The coolest part for me though, is that needrestart is fully integrated with apt/dpkg and will prompt you with a which services should be restarted dialog after an apt upgrade. Even though I have run debian sid on my daily driver for over 15 years, with a potential for available updates every 6 hours, without either of these programs installed until today, I would argue, that both of these are worth installing and using. With a distro like sid, there are some best practices; and while neither checkrestart or needrestart make this best practice list (like the must have apt-listbugs, and apt-listchanges packeges), needrestart (and checkrestart) both provide useful information (and the choice to act on the provided information) that can help make your high update to reboot ratio machine more secure. These are good things to have. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 13 1722_UNDERGROUND_AUDIOBOOK.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-13-1722_UNDERGROUND_AUDIOBOOK.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.13 TIME : 17:22 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : UNDERGROUND AUDIOBOOK =================================================================== Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier is a book written by Suelette Dreyfus with research by Julian Assange in 1997. The book's title is an apt description of what the book is about, so I won't go into detail about that. One of the unusual things about Underground is that the authors licensed the book as literary freeware, which means that the book is available to anyone, anywhere at no cost, and with almost no restrictions whatsoever, except for commercial use of course. The book is available at Project Gutenburg as well as at http://underground-book.net. After reading Underground in 2007, I tried to contact Suelette Dreyfus about making a festival text to speech audio version available as a serialized podcast. I never could get in touch with her, so I emailed Julian Assange about this: Tue, Mar 6, 2007, 8:41 PM "Julian, I have tried many time times to contact both you and Suelette regarding this. I would like very much to make the book Underground available in festival generated audio in a podcast format. I have taken the text files available at http://www.xs4all.nl/~suelette/underground/underground-speech-text/ and have converted them to audio using festival. I would like very much to make these files available as mp3 and ogg files (converted from the verbatim text files) available for download on an individual basis, as well as to allow the end user to subscribe to an rss feed containing the audio files. My gut tells me that this is something that I am allowed, but I do not want to assume the wrong thing. I want to make sure that i have permission to do this. Please know that I seek no personal gain from this. I would just be making the converted files available to people in modern download-able format. The feed could even be available in iTtunes. Please let me know if this is something I am allowed to do. Thanks in advance for your kind consideration of this request." His reply: Tues, Mar 6, 2007, 10:04 PM "Dear dave. Please do! Sorry if we haven't been easily available. Busy consulting for this http://wikileaks.org/ Best, J" I only included the above exchange for the following obvious reasons: it was super cool to have talked to one of the authors; Julian Assange wrote the super cool program surfraw (that I still use today in a rofi menu); the historical reference to wikileaks in it's infancy; and Julian Assange is even more (in)famous today. So please allow my braggadocio, as it was my 15 minutes of fame. I did make the audio files, and did release them as a podcast, and made them available for download too. I hosted these files on my server from 2007 until 2011 or so, when I sort of took a hiatus from the linux community. Anyway, the book is awesome, and you should read it if you haven't. Yesterday I generated new festival audio files for the book and put them on my gopher sites; download and enjoy if you wish. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 13 1133_FESTIVAL,_OR_THE_MORE_THINGS_CHANGE_THE_MORE_THEY_STAY_THE_SAME.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-13-1133_FESTIVAL,_OR_THE_MORE_THINGS_CHANGE_THE_MORE_THEY_STAY_THE_SAME.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.13 TIME : 11:33 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : FESTIVAL, OR THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME =================================================================== Many moons ago, I had a podcast that I recorded from my car during my commute. As a time saving measure, instead of correcting mistakes, or even worse, re-recording all or a portion of the podcast, I would use festival and the festival program, text2wave to have a computer generated, female voice, interrupt me and read aloud any corrections that were needed. She more or less became part of the show and was personified as Lynn. It was silly, and fun, but it solved a problem, worked for me, and in some way sort of reminded me of the fun my brother and sister had as kids back in the 70s using a tape cassette recorder and the heating ducts in our floor to broadcast our "radio station" from one room to the other. Back then, 2005-2010-ish, getting festival to sound "good" required installing the CMU Artic SLT voices, or better yet the Nitech HTS voices, and also required compiling and installing the latest festival from source. It seems to be much easier now, at least with debian, to get a result almost as good as I was able to achieve back in 2005 since the festvox-us-slt-hts voices are in the repo and get me very close to where I was then. Simply installing the festvox-us-slt-hts deb was enough to pull in everything I needed to get things working. Sadly, the Nitech HTS voices are still problematic, in fact even more so. In 2005 you had to have the latest version of festival and now in 2020 you have to have an old version since the Nitech HTS voices are not compatible with versions of festival greater than 2.1. Ain't that a kick in the head, the more things change the more they stay the same. None of this is probably new information, but its sort of news to me since I am re-visiting festival for the first time in 11 years. A lot has changed since then and commercial text to speech solutions are scary good nowadays; but if you want to use FOSS, festival still foots the bill. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> <item> <title>01 12 1332_FWUPDMGR_FTW!.txt</title> <link>gopher://sdf.org/0/users/norris/phlog/2021-01-12-1332_FWUPDMGR_FTW!.txt</link> <pubdate> 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubdate> <description><![CDATA[<pre> =================================================================== DATE : 2021.01.12 TIME : 13:32 AUTHOR : norris@sdf.org TITLE : FWUPDMGR FTW! =================================================================== fwupdmgr is awesome. Used to be, updating the bios and firmware on a computer with linux installed was more difficult than it is now. Sadly, Dell Poweredge machines aren't on the supported list (yet) of machines able to use fwupdmgr, and are therefore a real pain in the neck when BIOS and firmware updates come around; having to boot off a usb drive and execute a windows .exe file is never fun. Thankfully, Lenovo Thinkpads are supported and firmware updates are easy. What makes this easy is the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). LVFS is a secure web service where computer hardware vendors upload their firmware updates. If your hardware is supported, the firmware update daemon (fwupd) will connect to the LVFS and notify you when there are firmware updates. The updates can then be installed with the command line firmware update manager (fwupdmgr) client. There are even GUI fwupdmgr clients, but I have never used any of them. For me at least, using fwupdmgr has been simple and, so far has just worked. The list of supported hardware is long, and chances are good that your hardware is supported. If your hardware is not on the list yet, it could be added in the future as the list grows. So before ado is anyway furthered, here is the line by line: Display all devices detected by fwupd: fwupdmgr get-devices download the latest metadata: fwupdmgr refresh list all available updates for your machine: fwupdmgr-get updates and install the updates: fwupdmgr update You can even install the updates individually from the command line , but ONLY of you are SURE you have the correct cab file: fwupdmgr install name-of-the-file-you-are-sure-about.cab. --norris (o\_!_/o) </pre>]]></description> </item> </channel> </rss>