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Category: technology

Saturday, 30 April 2016

09:32 – Barbara is working out in the yard today. James, who mows our lawn, is coming over to help her load his truck up with some junk from down in the corner of the yard and haul it off to the dump.

I finally got KompoZer installed on my Mint 17.3 system. Debian dropped it from their repositories, which meant that Ubuntu no longer offered it, which meant that Linux Mint no longer offered it. I didn’t want to mess around with building it from source, so it was fortunate that I came across this page. FTA and for my own future reference:

How To Install kompozer

Kompozer was dropped from the repos, since it is no longer maintained in Debian. But, you can still install it on newer releases.

Use packages from 12.04 Precise

These packages are installable on at least the 12.10, 13.04, 14.04 and 15.04 releases.

First, install dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk2.0-0 libidl0 libnspr4 libnss3 libpango1.0-0 libpng12-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libxft2 libxinerama1 libxrender1 libxt6 zlib1g

Then, get the two packages, and install them in the correct order.

For 32bit systems:

wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer-data_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb

wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i kompozer-data_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i kompozer_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_i386.deb

for 64bit systems:

wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer-data_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb

wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i kompozer-data_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i kompozer_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_amd64.deb

You can now find kompozer in the menu.

11:54 – James showed up with a pickup load of cut, split, and dried hardwood firewood, mostly oak. We helped him unload it and stack it in the rack. It turned out to be more than a full face cord of 20″ logs. Call it half of a full cord. He charged $65, which seems cheap to me. If we ever had to heat the house exclusively with wood because the power was down, I’m guessing that the load we got today would last us two to three weeks. We also have about a half cord of old but still burnable wood down in the corner of the yard, which means we could stay warm for a month to six weeks even in the depths of winter up here, or longer if we weren’t trying to keep most of the house warm. We still need to pick up a couple of tarps to cover the woodpiles.

Barbara just announced that we should think about replacing the Trooper with a pickup. I think I’ll start keeping my eye out for a used Ford F150 or F250 diesel 4×4, or the Chevy equivalent. We’ll want an automatic transmission and AC, but that’s about it. I don’t care if it has some mileage on it, and a vehicle that’s ten years old or more would be fine.

I’ve never owned a diesel vehicle, although I almost bought a diesel pickup back in 1979 when I bought my Jeep CJ new. I know that small diesel engines used to have a lot of problems, but I assume those have been pretty much fixed over the last 35+ years.

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Friday, 8 April 2016

10:17 – Barbara is off to the gym and supermarket, after which we’ll be building more science kits. We built a batch of the FK01A forensic science kits yesterday. Today, we’ll get another batch of BK01 biology kits built and at least get started on a new batch of CK01A chemistry kits.

Lori just showed up with the mail, including a box from Amazon. A couple of years ago, my workhorse Brother HL-5250DN laser printer started printing an empty line down the middle of each printout. The problem was the drum unit, but when I checked for a replacement, the only option was a Brother-branded unit for $180. I paid something like $225 for the printer originally, and there was no way I was going to pay that to replace the drum on a printer that had already had some heavy use. The 5250 even with the stripe was fine for most of what I printed as it was, so I decided to just use it until it dropped. Then the other day, I was on Amazon and decided to search for a drum unit. Sure enough, they had a third-party replacement drum unit with excellent reviews for $18. (They also had a different one with not-so-good reviews for $12.) I’ve had good experience with third-party toner cartridges bought on Amazon, so I decided to give the $18 unit a try.

Not much time available for prepping this week, and we’re being careful about unnecessary spending until we get the house on the market and sold, so the only prepping-related thing I did was buy a print copy of All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition: The Revolutionary Way to Grow More In Less Space 2nd Edition. The last time I had a garden of my own was about 50 years ago, and I want to try growing some herbs and vegetables on a small scale.

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Saturday, 26 March 2016

09:27 – I see that David P. Goldman believes that Ted Cruz is our last, best hope. Wishful thinking, boy. I agree that I’d rather see Cruz as president than Trump and certainly than Clinton or Bern the Commie. But I don’t believe it would make much, if any, difference to how things unfold over the coming years. Things might be a bit better under a Cruz presidency, but all it would really mean is that our slide into dystopia would be a bit slower. Nothing can stop it now.

Barbara is going to cut my hair this morning, and then we’ll do more work around the house.

Barbara’s drink of choice has always been sweet iced tea, which she makes up in gallon pitchers. I’d always drunk mostly Coke, but I’ve cut way down on that. I used to go through maybe ten 2-liter bottles a week, and now I’m down to more like one a week. Instead, I’m drinking iced tea, so Barbara is now making at least twice as much as she used to. One of the things she picked up at Costco the other day was two boxes of tea bags, 624 total bags. That’s enough to last the two of us three to four months at our current consumption rate. It also cuts down on our cost for Coke by about $500/year. From Barbara’s point of view, the major advantage is that we won’t be adding to the hundreds of empty 2-liter bottles that I save for LTS food and water.

14:21 – What a relief! I can finally work normally again. I now have Linux Mint running on a new hard drive in my old Core i7-Extreme system, with all of my data migrated over and all the programs I use installed. The sticking point was these damned powerline Ethernet adapters, which I simply couldn’t get to work between the WiFi router and my little corner in the dining room that’s now my office. Just now, I installed the D-Link DWA-140 USB WiFi adapter, which Linux Mint recognized automagically. All I had to do was enter the password for the WiFi AP. Our Internet service is nominally 20 megabits/s down and 2 up. I just ran the HTML5 speed test from bandwidthplace.com, which tells me I’m getting a 21 ms ping with about 11 Mb/s down and 4 Mb/s up. Not bad, given how far I am from the AP.

We finished watching the final season of Justified the other night. Like the other seasons, it’s set mostly in Harlan County, Kentucky, which is only about 160 miles WNW of us in Sparta. As Barbara said, she’d be as careful back in the hollows around here as she’d be if we were living in Harlan. My attitude is that pretty much everyone around here minds their own business, so if we mind our own business we should be fine, but Barbara does have a point.

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Thursday, 24 March 2016

07:14 – We’re working around the house today. There’s a lot remaining to be done in the lab area. We moved our generator from the garage to the lab area yesterday, and picked up some concrete blocks and pressure-treated lumber at Blevins that we’ll use to build a firewood rack. I’m not sure we’ll get to that today, but it needs to be done soon. We got enough components for a rack large enough to hold a face cord. Once we get that one set up and some wood delivered, we’ll probably add another one or two racks. I’d like to have at least a full cord in place before autumn. And I definitely want to get things setup as soon as possible so that we can use our generator to power the well pump and pressure tank.

I wasted a lot of time trying to get our Brother 3070 color laser printer working. The best explanation I have for the problem is that that USB port on the printer seems to be only partially functional. Linux sees the printer and thinks it’s available, but print jobs sent to it simply disappear without printing. The printer also has an Ethernet interface, so I may set it up as a network printer, but for now I’m using our older Brother 5250-DN laser.



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Friday, 26 February 2016

09:26 – Internet problems ate my day yesterday. I’m still not sure what’s going on. We’re on Skybest fiber broadband, provisioned for 20 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Until yesterday morning, my notebook sitting on the dining room table was getting about 8 Mbps down, which is acceptable given how far it is from the WiFi WAP. As of yesterday morning, it started yielding a 4,500+ ms ping and down/up of 0.1 Mbps, with frequent DNS resolution errors and time outs. Also, the evening before, Netflix streaming died with a Roku unable to connect error. The Roku is on a TP Link powerline ethernet adapter.

I called tech support. Skybest’s tech support is head and shoulders above any other broadband provider I’ve ever heard of. She spent almost an hour on the phone with me, resetting the TA and router and trying various things. At that point, the Netflix streaming was working, as was WiFi to my Fire and Barbara’s notebook. She wasn’t satisfied and told me she’d have a technician visit as soon as one was free. An hour or so later, two techs showed up. They repeated a lot of what I’d already done while talking to support, and verified that I had a decent WiFi signal upstairs as well as down, even though my notebook on the dining room table was still showing 0.1 Mbps down and up. Barbara’s notebook on her desk 10 feet away was showing 8/2 Mbps, even though it connects by WiFi.

After they left, I unplugged the monitor and a bunch of USB devices from my notebook and carried it into Barbara’s office, where I was getting the same 8/2 Mbps. Aha, I thought, for some reason WiFi has taken a dislike to the dining room table. At that point, I gave up for the evening. This morning, I again checked my notebook on Barbara’s desk and it again gave me 8/2 Mbps. So I carried it 10 feet to the dining room table, expecting 0.1/0.1 Mbps, but it tested at 8/2 Mbps. Apparently, the situation somehow resolved itself. Then I plugged in the monitor, USB keyboard, USB printer, etc. I clicked on the Start Test icon to check again. You guessed it: 0.1/0.1.

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Tuesday, 16 February 2016

11:32 – More sleet and freezing rain came in yesterday afternoon and through the night, but not enough more to matter. Our mail ran late this morning, but it was the replacement guy delivering on the Tuesday after a Monday holiday, so that was expected. The garbage pickup service didn’t run yesterday, but they’ll get here eventually.

I just closed my Stamps.com account. It’s a PITA to use their software, and with USPS Click-N-Ship now supporting Regional Rate boxes again at the Commercial Base Pricing, I wouldn’t save enough money with Stamps.com to offset the $16/month fee.

The Lenovo Core i7 micro-tower is setup and running fine under Windows 10. When I get a spare moment, I’ll pop the lid, disconnect the Windows drive, install a new hard drive, and install Linux Mint. I’ll just leave the original hard drive in the unit, where I can find it if I ever need to run Windows again.

I did pull three DVDs of the original Windows installation, or at least I think I did. I was expecting each restore/recovery set to span more than one DVD+R disc, but each set fit on one DVD with something like 1 GB to spare. I have no clue where to find the activation key or whatever they call it now. I expected at least a sticker on the system unit, but there isn’t one. Search around in Windows, all I found listed was a long string of all X’s and hyphens, with only the last few characters being a part of the actual key. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Microsoft?

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Monday, 15 February 2016

10:58 – We got maybe 3″ of snow and sleet overnight, with more expected today and tonight, perhaps with some freezing rain mixed in. We don’t need to go anywhere, so we’re just staying indoors other than to give Colin a little outside time.

We were down to only a couple of biology kits left in stock, so we made up another dozen or so yesterday. For this time of year we’re in good shape now on finished-goods inventory. We’re shipping less than one kit per day on average, which’ll be the norm through the end of next month.

I finally got my new Lenovo Core i7 micro-tower system unboxed. It’s sitting on my office desk downstairs downloading and installing Windows 10 updates as I write this upstairs on my notebook. Once it finishes updating, I’ll pull two or three backup copies of the fresh installation to DVDs, download and burn the current Linux Mint, replace the hard drive with a new one, install Linux Mint, restore all my data, and get things configured the way I want them. That’ll probably take all day today, on and off, and maybe some time tomorrow as well.

The video card has dual outputs, so I’ll probably connect a second display to the system. Linux Mint handles dual displays well, and I just happen to have a spare 25″ display that’s not being used. I’ve never worked with dual displays before, so it’ll be interesting to see how the extra screen real estate changes how I work.

I started writing my PA novel last night, but only in my head. I’m using the real names of the people I’m basing characters upon because otherwise I’d have a hard time keeping things straight. I’ll just go back and do a search and replace when I finish the first draft, followed by a very careful read-through to catch the inevitable S&R errors. I actually have no idea whether or not I can write a decent novel, so I’ll post the first couple of chapters to let you guys tell me how I’m doing. If it turns out that I’m a mediocre novelist (or worse), I’ll just bag it. It’s not like I don’t have lots of other stuff to fill my time.

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Saturday, 13 February 2016

07:18 – We’re still plugging away on getting things unboxed and organized. We periodically find an Easter egg. Yesterday, Barbara shouted up that she’d just found a 1,400-round bucket of .22 LR ammo, which she’d just put on the ammo shelves. She’s uncovered lots of stuff that I’d forgotten I had or thought I’d lost.

My new Kindle showed up yesterday. I have to say that I hate the new OS. The OS on Barbara’s and my old reading Kindles isn’t great by any means, but at least it stays out of one’s way while one is reading. The new version is very much in-your-face, as usual pushing for users to buy Amazon products. Good luck with that, since this one won’t be connected to the Internet. Oh, and I got my notebook disconnected and moved upstairs, which I needed to do before I can get the new desktop system set up.

We managed to get a bit of prepping stuff done this week:

  • We got two sets of floor-to-ceiling steel shelving set up in my office downstairs. We loaded and organized the 5×2-foot unit with LTS food, which we also inventoried, and the 4×2-foot unit with general emergency supplies.
  • I read another bunch of PA novels. As usual, most of them sucked.
  • I got the Isuzu Trooper checked out. It should be good to go for now, although one of these days it’s probably going to drop dead. It is, after all, almost 23 years old.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

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Monday, 1 February 2016

09:18 – We’re back to kit stuff this week, along with getting my new desktop system installed and working.

Colin got a huge shock this morning when I took him out to pee. As he walked out the front door and around the corner of the house, what should he spot but two or three dozen gigantic squirrels right along the back fence? He shouted, “Look at the size of those squirrels!” and went on alert. I explained to him that they were actually Black Angus squirrels and that it’d be a really bad idea to chase them. He shrugged, lifted his leg to pee, and came back into the house. Oddly, there was one Holstein squirrel mixed in with all the Black Angus squirrels.

Incidentally, I mentioned the other day that I’d gotten through about 25% of Cyberstorm, and that it seemed good so far. Alas, it didn’t last. The book quickly degenerated into a piece of garbage, despite the thousands of 4- and 5-star reviews it has on Amazon. As usual, the 1-star reviews give a better idea of the real quality of the book, which is to say 1-star.

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Friday, 29 January 2016

09:19 – Amazon updated my Kindle Fire, and presumably Barbara’s, to the new version of their OS overnight. The changes are significant, and many of them appear gratuitous, but we’ll see how they work. I normally work in landscape mode, and they’ve moved the home and back arrow keys from the side to the bottom of the display and changed the icons. That’ll take some getting used to.

My new desktop system from Costco arrived yesterday, but I haven’t had time to unbox it. It has three times the memory and about 10 times the processor of the notebook I’ve been using, so it should be a lot better for my typical work habits. On the downside, it runs Windows 10, which I have to leave on it because I need Windows to run the stamps.com software. All my time over the next couple days is allocated to government-mandated administrative crap, but I’ll get moved over to the new system on Monday.

Other than general relocation/moving-in type tasks, I didn’t get much done this week on the prepping front. Here’s what I managed to do:

  • I read a bunch of PA novels, most of which weren’t very good. One exception is the one I started last night, Matthew Mather’s CyberStorm, which I borrowed with Kindle Unlimited and got through about a quarter of last night. Unlike most of the new breed of PA novelists, Mather can actually write. He’s also prolific and likes to do series, so I expect there’ll soon be a sequel or sequel to this book.
  • I did more research on small solar power setups. I don’t yet understand all the issues well enough to start buying panels and so on, but I’m getting there. My goal is to have sufficient solar capacity to be able to run our well pump and provide sufficient power for basic lighting, comms, and so on. I do know that I’ll focus first on acquiring the high-tech components–panels, charge controllers, inverters, and so on–and worry later about storage batteries. We could, if necessary, use ordinary automobile batteries, although they’re not ideal.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

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