March 2015 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Dirty Power and Wi Fi Far field effect
by Russell Reiter 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

I live close to the exhibition grounds which is near to one of the city's major grid switches. For example, they were testing the new streetcars, the ones with three sections for navigating tight turns and they browned us down to (I assume) 50hz. This was visible as all the lights dimmed and the streetcar appeared to navigate the loop a short time later. As I don't have ups I had powered down my tower. The next time I powered up the breaker in the power supply tripped and when I reset it and booted, my 1.5v agp video card was toasted, at least I hope its the card and not elsewhere on the bus. So that's not so bad, there's no enterprise stuff at risk, I just hack together another box and carry on. However, now I have a real problem and I'm in need of a solution. Yesterday I fired up the WiFi while my SO was drying her hair. I toasted her salon quality hair dryer. Not good. :-( There is no gfi outlet and at this point I'm wondering if I need UPS, for the hair dryer, if not the computer. So my question is, does anyone on this list have similar problems and a low cost hack they have used to deal with Toronto's iffy grid. TIA Russell

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war story: creating Raspberry Pi 2 boot card
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 14 Mar '15

14 Mar '15

I found an excuse to buy a Raspberry Pi 2. Mathematica was too slow on the Raspberry Pi B. We bought one at the Canada Robotix store in Markham. $48.99 + 6.37 tax. The RP2 uses Micro SD rather than normal SD and the software isn't 100% compatible so I created a new MicroSD as the "hard drive". I used a SanDisk Extreme PLUS microSDHC UHS-1 32GB card (I had one on hand). I wanted to use the latest Raspbian because it is compatible with the RP2 and includes Mathematica. I tried several things before one worked. I'm writing this up to save others from frustration. These accounts are based on my unreliable memory -- I had no idea that it would have been worth taking notes. I was kind of improvising, starting from here <http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/> Spoiler: my current hypothesis is that my (Linux) desktop's SD interface is silently busted in some way. If you've done any of this, I'd like to hear how it worked for you. Attempt 1: - The card was brand new, already formatted with some FAT-family filesystem - I fetched the NOOBS Offline and network install - I installed the card in my desktop computer and used Linux unzip - I moved the card to the RP2 and powered it on. The green "reading SD" and orange or red "power" LEDS came on and stayed on, with no other visible activity. I gave up. Attempt 2: - same card - from my desktop machine, I dd'ed the RASPBIAN image onto the card - I tried to boot it. Same result. Attempt 3: - same card - booted Windows on a notebook and ran SD Formatter 4.0 (as prescribed in <http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/noobs-setup/>) to create just the right filesystem. - went to my desktop machine and unzipped NOOBS into the card - I tried to boot it. Same result. Attempt 4: - same card - booted Windows on a notebook and ran SD Formatter 4.0 (as prescribed in <http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/noobs-setup/>) to create just the right filesystem. - I used Windows to unzipped NOOBS into the card - I tried to boot it. It worked! ================ Early hypotheses that are refuted: - my microSD card was no good. Or not compatible with the RP2 - my RP2 was no good Lingering hypotheses: - Perhaps my desktop's SD interface is silently busted. It is a common factor on all failures. - the preformatted filesystem that came on the microSD may not work for the RP2's boot system - Linux's unzip botches things some way. Perhaps some flag is needed. Experiments I should try (but may not): - retry each of the experiments that failed, but use Linux on my notebook rather than on my desktop. - see if my notebook can read and verify microSD cards written by my desktop

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PDP-8 50th anniversary next week.
by James Knott 13 Mar '15

13 Mar '15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8 BTW, I used to maintain a PDP-8/i. It was used to send telegrams.

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My presentation from last night's GTALUG meeting.
by Myles Braithwaite 12 Mar '15

12 Mar '15

<https://github.com/myles/2015-03-10-jrnl/blob/master/presentation.md>

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FSF Europe "Document Freedom Day"
by Christopher Browne 11 Mar '15

11 Mar '15

I just saw this yesterday afternoon, so there hasn't been opportunity to do much vetting of this. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is doing a "Document Freedom Day" to encourage awareness of Open Standards about document formats. http://documentfreedom.org/ A primary sponsor is LibreOffice/The Document Foundation, which should give some idea as to where the thoughts about standards might be coming from. The date of the event is March 25th, which is sufficiently close by that I don't think we can organizationally get anything too major into place, but if people are individually interested, see if there's something you'd be keen on doing about it. I'd think it a neat idea for us as individuals to forward this to our various political representatives (e.g. - city councillors, MPPs, MPs) to encourage their awareness as representatives of organizations that manage rather a lot of documents on our behalf. I would think that is likely to be at nearly as effective as trying to do a formal submission as an organization. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

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Pre-meeting bite at Ethiopiques
by Christopher Browne 11 Mar '15

11 Mar '15

As per the announcement, some of us will be getting together for a bite before the meeting, tonight at Ethiopiques http://www.ethiopiques.ca 227 Church St Toronto, ON On the corner of Dundas + Church, immediately east of Dundas Station. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting on Tonight (10th March) at 7:30pm
by Myles Braithwaite 10 Mar '15

10 Mar '15

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2015-03/> # Short Talks on Productivity Tools ownCloud - Alex Volkov - Access your data from all your devices, on an open platform you can extend and modify. todo.sh - Christopher Browne - Track your tasks and projects in a plain text file, todo.txt. todo.sh Touch - Scott Sullivan - A jaunt through using todo.txt on your mobile devices. Learn the basic and how to sync it with any todo.txt desktop tools you may be using. jrnl - Myles Braithwaite - A command line journal application. ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <http://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23447525> ## Schedule * 6:00 pm - Before each meeting a group of GTALUGers dine at Ethiopiques (227 Church Street). * 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation. * 9:00 pm - After each meeting a group of GTALUGers move to the The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socializing. ## Code of Conduct We want a productive happy community that can welcome new ideas, improve every process every year, and foster collaboration between individuals with differing needs, interests and skills. We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who enhance it. This code of conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups collaborate to mutual advantage and enjoyment. We will challenge prejudice that could jeopardize the participation of any person in the community. The Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the Linux community will be judged by our actions. We expect it to be honored by everyone who represents the community officially or informally, claims affiliation, or participates directly. It applies to activities online or offline. We invite anybody to participate. Our community is open. Please read more about the GTALUG Code of Conduct here: <http://gtalug.org/about/code-of-conduct/>. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the GTALUG Code of Conduct please contact one of the GTALUG Board Members. --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Live and die by the command line WAS Re: git questions
by Giles Orr 07 Mar '15

07 Mar '15

On 6 March 2015 at 13:24, Loui Chang <louipc.ist(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri 06 Mar 2015 10:52 -0500, Giles Orr wrote: >> I live and die by the command line, and I'm fairly sure all of this >> can be achieved without installing extra tools ... > [SNIP] > > What do you use for mail on the command line? Ah, you're making a perfectly reasonable assumption that I can't live up to. I don't browse the web from the CLI and I don't do mail from the CLI. I'm trying to think of other exceptions - I'm sure there are one or two - but I guess those are the major ones. I used mutt for a year or so (a decade ago), but configuring it always required a huge amount of reading, editing text files, cursing, and rinse and repeat. While vim is arguably the same, I found the rewards greater - so I continue to use vim but these days I use Gmail's web interface rather than mutt. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Open source router with http login
by Dave Cramer 07 Mar '15

07 Mar '15

I have a need for a router like they have at hotels where people need to login to get a connection. Is there anything a)small, and b) open source available ? Dave Cramer

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OT Spammers - Canadian indicted in one of largest data breaches in U.S. history
by Russell Reiter 07 Mar '15

07 Mar '15

First post from phablet. Checking content rendering. Maybe these guys all met at Everest College. I went to RAND's previous shill school CDI in 94. I know more than a few peek and pokers came out of that place. http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2015/03/06/canadian-indicted-in-one-of-la… Three people, two Vietnamese nationals and a Canadian, are being indicted for hacking email service providers and laundering money, U.S. Department of Justice says.

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