June 2016 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Damian Conway in town Monday + Tuesday
by Myles Braithwaite 24 Jun '16

24 Jun '16

Just a reminder Damian Conway is going to Toronto this Monday and Tuesday. Make sure you RSVP before attending as space us usually limited. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Damian Conway in town Monday + Tuesday Hello! My name is Dave Doyle and I'm the co-organizer of the Toronto Perl Mongers. Sorry for the late notice, but Damian Conway is in town again on Monday and Tuesday and GTALug members have come out for him many times before. Would you be able to fire a missive to your members regarding this? People can RSVP for each meeting on Meetup.com http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Perl-Mongers/events/231418224/ http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Perl-Mongers/events/231418278/ Damian also put his own money down to come here, so if anyone can help defray the cost of him coming here, please go to: https://gofundme.com/damian_conway Or find me (Dave Doyle) at the event and drop some cash in my hand. :) Many thanks! Dave

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Cheap 4k TV That Can be Used as a Monitor
by CLIFFORD ILKAY 24 Jun '16

24 Jun '16

Hello All, The Canadian Tire flyer has a 43" Seiki 4k UltraHD Smart TV (while quantities last - sorry no rainchecks, which usually means, forget about finding this anywhere) on sale at $399.99. I could not find this on the Seiki web site. They have a 42" model though <http://www.seiki.com/content/42-se42um-led-ultra-hdtv>. It will do 60Hz via HDMI 3. I do not know any video cards that will do that. Caveats * One year warranty. Who knows what their warranty support it like? * You will probably have to drive this at 30Hz. Hugh has a 39" Seiki that he drives at 30Hz. I do not think he finds the mouse lag objectionable. * The picture on the CT flyer is similar to the one on the Seiki web site but it is not identical. That and the 42" vs 43" discrepancy suggests the one at CT is different. * The legs on both models look just like the crappy Wasabi Mango monitor that I talked about a few weeks ago. LG uses the same legs. The 42" TV on the web site looks identical to the crappy Wasabi Mango. (Keyword frequency is important for search engine optimization.) -- Regards, Clifford Ilkay + 1 647-778-8696

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IPv4 Fraudsters
by Christopher Browne 22 Jun '16

22 Jun '16

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/06/fraudsters_are_.html I don't manage any IPv4 allocations, but I'll bet there are some out there on the list that do; it's probably worth taking a peek to ensure that your favorite blocks don't look too disused. The interesting observation on Schneier's blog was that someone mused that, notwithstanding the fraudulent activities going on, it seemed like a useful notion to pry unused IPv4 addresses out of hands that were ignoring them... -- 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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LinuxCon and ContainerCon in Toronto, August 22-24
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 22 Jun '16

22 Jun '16

<http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/containercon/attend/register> I just noticed (or re-noticed) that this is local. But the registration price (now US$950) means I won't be going. Microsoft is a Diamond Sponsor. At that price, why do they need sponsors?

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Fedora 24 came out today
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 21 Jun '16

21 Jun '16

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Wireless routers
by o1bigtenor 21 Jun '16

21 Jun '16

Greetings I stock a second router so that if any garbage happens that I can switch in a second machine. Started this because I managed to get a second (identical router) to what I was using. Things have moved on and the ASUS RT-N16 is no longer that available (and one item died after 4 years of use) and is now somewhat to the back of the pack for performance. I am running DD-WRT and finding that I can, so far at least, get done what I need to do. Am looking for recommendations for routers available today that are what this RT-N16 was 4 years ago without breaking the bank. Looking for wireless for a small business/home (area 75 m by 100 m - multiple buildings) and a 4 port hard wire connection system. I'm not sure really even what to look for. Was suggested to me to stay away from Broadcom products as they aren't very open source friendly but am looking for suggestions from whomever for a good quality long term usable wireless router. TIA Dee

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first LibreOffice meetup tonight
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 21 Jun '16

21 Jun '16

<http://www.meetup.com/LibreOffice-Toronto/events/231356343/>

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Converting .pptx files to multiple .png
by Bob Jonkman 20 Jun '16

20 Jun '16

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi: I've got a bunch of .pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint) files that I'd like to convert to individual .png files for each slide, preferably where each step in a transition becomes its own .png file. I can export one slide at a time from LibreOffice, but I'd much rather do it in bulk from the command line. I can convert the whole .pptx file to .pdf and then extract each slide with 'pdftocairo -png [filename.pdf]' but that seems clunky, and doesn't preserve transitions as individual .png files. Is there something to do pptx2png conversion from the command line? - --Bob. - -- Bob Jonkman <bjonkman(a)sobac.com> Phone: +1-519-635-9413 SOBAC Microcomputer Services http://sobac.com/sobac/ Software --- Office & Business Automation --- Consulting GnuPG Fngrprnt:04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 Comment: Ensure confidentiality, authenticity, non-repudiability iEYEARECAAYFAldoQA8ACgkQuRKJsNLM5epUtQCeNbnyW75MWA9ZtHK7sLpsaBNp /0AAn1oYqmoXJwRMohibfeaii41imtcN =qq17 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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War Story: for want of a nail...
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 20 Jun '16

20 Jun '16

(Actually, for want of a nylon post, but that's less poetic.) Only read this if you are interested in an example of hardware debugging. An older desktop, acting as a MythTV server, started crashing hard. - would start to reboot, get past POST, but didn't get all the way up. - didn't seem to be software because the spot that it stopped was not consistent. It would even crash while I was in grub trying to edit the kernel like to show more boot logging. - Power supplies are often the problem. My tester said all the voltages were there (but of course that's a pretty coarse test). - Often contacts stop conducting as well as they used to. Oxidization? Unplugging and plugging in all the RAM, cards, and devices did not fix anything so that probably was not the problem. - Then I notice the heat sink on the nvidia FeForce 8200 chipset was askew. And something was loose in the bottom of the case. Here's a picture of the motherboard: <http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_Detail.aspx?DetailID=873&M…> The heatsink in question is orange, near the top right. There are two nylon posts that hold the heatsink against the chip (see the white spots on opposite corners of the heatsink?). The one post had perished and let go. Probably slightly explosively since between the head of the post and the heatsink is a spring (a bit like the spring in a retractible ballpoint pen). When I touched the still-functioning post, it broke too. I figured the computer's behaviour was consistent with the chip overheating. I didn't know how to source the right nylon replacement posts. Instead, I used a pair of pairs of cable ties. I used some 20-year old thermal grease (hey, I seemed to have bought a lifetime supply back in the day). I first scraped off the one-time phase-change thermal pad that had been used. I was happy that my jury-rigged computer seems to be functioning correctly now.

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Re: [GTALUG] Transient Harmonics at home; was mysterious restarts
by Russell Reiter 19 Jun '16

19 Jun '16

Here's a nice overview of common issues in balancing linear vs. non-linear loads at home. You wouldn't think your little cluster is part of the problem but it can be. https://www.mikeholt.com/technical-power-quality-harmonics.php Sent from mobile.

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