Musings of an aging computer nerd hitting 0x32
Linux Distro hunting
I’m looking for a new Distro to run on my old PCs at home.
- Low profile, able to run in small amount of RAM
- Fast booting
- Python
- Firefox 3.x, Opera 10.x or Chromium browser
- Mplayer or similar for video playback
Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
Remote control using Twitter
I have been thinking about running task on a Ubuntu Linux machine remotely using Twitter. Why you ask, due to firewall restriction where the machine is located I can’t get direct access to it but it has connection out to the internet.
- I send a direct message to a Twitter account which only follows me and I follow on my main account.
- This contains the code for type of download and the URL of the download.
- The Python script is started by cron at scheduled times.
- The script connects to Twitter and checks for direct messages.
- It parses the direct message and either spawns a WGET or youTube-dl command to get the resource.
- If its a video it then runs a command is run to convert it to divX ready for upload it to my phone.
- If its a file then it is virus checked.
- Finally the direct messages are deleted from the Twitter account and a reply sent to my Twitter account.
Converting MP4 files to other divX and mp3 formats
I find myself often converting MP4 video files to divX and mp3 format to play on my LG phone.
#!/bin/bash
echo “MP4 Conversion”
for f in *.mp4;
do
echo “…Processing $f file…"
ffmpeg -i “$f” -vn -ac 2 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k echo $f|cut -d. -f1.mp3 > /dev/null 2>&1
mencoder “$f” -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o echo $f|cut -d. -f1.divx > /dev/null 2>&1
done
Odroid: all the open, none of the contract
Note: 2 of this post’s 5 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.
Ubuntu 10.04
Week 17 Stained Glass
Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr
farmNsubdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.
Week 17 Stained Glass
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
One of the stained glass panels my mum made
Day 28 Tired
Note: 2 of this post’s 4 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr
farmNsubdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.
Day 28 Tired
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
Day 28 of my 365 self portraits project
Crystal 5
Created with Context Free
Alastair’s Fractals Main Page,
My Shop at CafePress, My Shop at Zazzle Sign My Guestbook
© Alastair Montgomery 2008
Create and manage databases in Linux with Glom
Note: 18 of this post’s 31 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.
Might be worth a look.
If you’ve ever had to work with a database in Linux you most likely are aware of three or four tools that can handle the task: MySQL, PostgreSQL, PhpMyAdmin, and OpenOffice Base. These are all outstanding applications, but the first two are complex command-line only tools, the third requires a web server, and the last isn’t as robust as some admins will need. But there is another tool that is very flexible and makes creating databases a simple task.