Geek Stuff category archive
An Apple for the Teacher 0
North Carolina state superintendent of schools goes on an iJunket.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.
It’s not hard; it’s just different.
When: Monthly TWUUG meeting at 7:30 p. m. on the first Thursday of the month (Today,September 6, 2018). Pre-meeting dinner at Chicago Uno, JANAF shopping center, 6:00 p. m. (map)
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room (map). (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.
Meta: Well, That Was a Relief 0
Every week, usually on Monday, I perform regular maintenance on the database for this blog. I log into my hosting provider, navigate to CPanel, and do a “check,” “repair,” and “optimize” on the SQL database. I then export the database tables and save a copy on my local computer what I’m typing on right now because there is no such thing as too many backups.
Happy Birthday to Me 0
From Pine View Farm is 13 years old today.
It’s been a long strange trip, one that I could not have predicted.
PVF started as hobby project to learn more about Linux. Initially I self-hosted it from an old IBM PC 300 (one of the original Pentiums) in my guest room using Slackware 10 and noip.com. Now the website is out there somewhere on a most excellent hosting provider whose tech support is unparalled. And, along the way, I’ve learned a lot about Linux, HTML, and css.
PVF is still a hobby, or, perhaps more properly, an avocation, to which I am deeply committed. I hope to continue shooting my mouth off on the inner webs for a long time to come.
For every time I consider giving it up, something new comes along to feed the outrage.
Geeking Out 0
The Fluxbox window manager on Debian Stretch. That’s the GKrellM system monitor with the “Glass” theme over there in the lower right corner, and xclock in the upper right.
I don’t have much of a reason for posting this other than I think that the background image is very pretty. I like my pretty pictures.
Geeking Out 0
Debian 9 with the Fluxbox window manager on a ThinkPenguin E-Box.
Debian, for some fool reason, does not include the “Fluxbox Regenerate Menu” script in its Fluxbox package. To regenerate and then customize the menu, I had to copy the script from another instance and run it under Debian.
So you don’t have to go through this annoyance, I have published the “Fluxbox Regenerate Menu” script here.
And in case you are wondering, yes, I do quite like Fluxbox. It combines the eye candy of a desktop environment with the simplicity of a window manager. I’m currently defaulting to it on all of my machines.
“The Suit” 0
My local rag has a fascinating story about the protective gear that bomb disposal techs wear.
I commend it to your attention.
Facebook Frolics 0
Just the kind of guy we would want guiding our children’s educational experiences.
Man, you see stuff like this and can’t help wondering, “Don’t these folks know how to behave in public?” Then you realize that “social” media purposefully lulls its “users” into forgetting that the internet is a public place.
Walking the Walk 0
I think Atrios is onto something here.
How Stuff Works, Everyone’s a Clickit Dept. 0
Sunday’s New York Times offered a detailed exploration of the lucrative business of selling ersatz “views” of YouTube videos, duplicitous “likes” on Facebook, and spurious listens on SoundCloud.
Have Cake, Eat It Too 0
The Bangor Daily News, using Alex Jones as a starting point, calls out Silicon Valley “social” media’s self-serving sophistries.
Geeking Out 0
Mageia Linux v. 6 with the Fluxbox window manager using the OxAR style, with the venerable xclock and GKrellM system monitor.
Twits on Twitter 0
Bob Molinaro, sportswriter extraordinaire:
I have mixed feelings about this stuff. On the one hand, dammit, my parents taught me how to behave in public, and these kids should have known how to behave in public. On the other hand, social media outfits aggressively try to convince their users that said outlets are somehow intimate spaces where they can betray all their most intimate secrets to marketeers express themselves freely.
And teen-aged boys do stupid things.
I know.
I was a teen-aged boy.
As I said, mixed feelings.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 2
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.
It’s not hard; it’s just different.
When: Monthly TWUUG meeting at 7:30 p. m. on the first Thursday of the month (August 2, 2018). Pre-meeting dinner at Chicago Uno, JANAF shopping center, 6:00 p. m. (map)
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room (map). (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.
Farcical Recognition 0
Remember, much of the tech stuff you see on your telly vision is not forensic science, but rather forensic science fiction. In real life, when it doesn’t work as expected, the repercussions can be devastating, if not fatal, to the mis-recognized. For example:
More accurately, the 28 members of Congress were falsely matched with mugshots from the 25,000 publicly-available arrest photos (the ACLU did not specify where it got the photos). (Though Lewis was, in fact, arrested during civil rights protests in the 1960s, the ACLU’s blog post on the test implied these photos were not part of their test.)
Eleven of the falsely identified Congresspeople were people of color, 40 percent of the erroneous matches, despite people of color making up less than 30 percent of Congress.
Much more at the link.