Downloading Twitter Data or Not
Posted on Mon, Jan 4, 2021
| Alan Pope
Bit of a rant, sorry. I’m trying to download my data from Twitter. I login via the web page, find the place to do this, note its says I’ll get an “archive of your data we think is most important to you”. Uh-huh, you think. Then click the button.
It takes a day to build that archive, and you’re not allowed to ask for it again for 30 days. Next day I get a notification so I can download it.
[Read More]Check for Outdated Snaps
Posted on Sun, Jan 3, 2021
| Alan Pope
I don’t consider myself a ‘Developer’ but I maintain a bunch of snaps in the Snap Store, and threw together a shell script which I’m sharing here in case it’s useful to other publishers. The goal of the script is to go through each snap and check to see if there’s a newer version of it upstream than currently published in the store. As such it’s not meant for end-users, but for people like me who publish multiple snaps from different places, and want to keep on top of them.
[Read More]Eufy RoboVac 30C Review
Posted on Sat, Jan 2, 2021
(Last modified on Thu, Aug 24, 2023)
| Alan Pope
3 months ago I bought a Eufy RoboVac 30C (affiliate link) vacuum cleaner. Now feels like a good time to write a review. Before The Event we had a cleaner at home who came once a week. We no longer have a cleaner and I’m now the only adult in the house, so figured I could do with some help cleaning up. In short, yes, I’d recommend it, if you have similar requirements to me.
[Read More]Great Timing
Posted on Fri, Jan 1, 2021
| Alan Pope
With a keen interest in all things “retro”, I’ve previously bought copies of Fusion Magazine, which I’ve enjoyed. Shortly after I blogged yesterday about The Best Portable Spectrum, I received a marketing email from Fusion Retro Books. With impeccable timing, they’re promoting a new Spectrum game, called Neadeital by Matt Birch.
They had me at the screenshot. I was a big fan of Tir Na Nog, Dun Durach (and Heavy on the Magick) as a kid.
[Read More]The Best Portable Spectrum
Posted on Thu, Dec 31, 2020
| Alan Pope
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was the second computer I ever owned, a natural upgrade from the Sinclair ZX81. I still own a small collection of Spectrums which work perfectly after a bit of light refurbishment thanks to Mutant Caterpillar.
They’re not often setup to play with, due to the space needed.
Some Many of the Spectrum games are absolute classics, and still remain fun to play now though. There’s plenty of ways to play under emulation on desktops and laptops.
[Read More]Snap Along With Me
Posted on Wed, Dec 30, 2020
| Alan Pope
Every so often I find myself with an idle hour and decide to use that time to package some new software for Linux. A common activity among nerds, I’m sure ;). This blog post is a write up of what I did, and why, which may be useful to others with time on their hands.
I keep meaning to live stream when I do, but on this occasion I had a bad hair day was also listening to and engaging with a podcast, so it wasn’t practical.
[Read More]Contributing without Code
Posted on Tue, Dec 29, 2020
| Alan Pope
In the mid-90s I was an avid user of online conferencing system called CIX (Compulink Information eXchange). CIX was built using the CoSy Conferencing system from the University of Guelph, which has since been open sourced. Think of it like a dial-up or telnet-accessed forum or message board with a nerd-heavy userbase.
Each day I’d dial-up to download messages, then read & respond offline. Later in the day I’d re-connect to send my responses and download more messages.
[Read More]Notifications on Task Completion
Posted on Mon, Dec 28, 2020
| Alan Pope
Like many in development-oriented roles, I’m frequently running long-executing tasks on my workstation, while I get on with a sword fight, or making a cup of coffee.
More seriously, I do often leave a software build, or packaging script running, while I context-switch to answer support requests, proof-read a blog post, or prepare for a meeting. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded when that long-runner finishes, otherwise I might forget it’s sat there, all lonely in another workspace somewhere on my computer.
[Read More]Double Your Network Speed with This One Trick
Posted on Sun, Dec 27, 2020
| Alan Pope
The trick: Read the manual.
I pay for 100Mb/s downstream Internet connection at home. For months I’ve been getting around 50Mb/s at my desk, and 100Mb/s over wifi on my phone, under optimal conditions. Here’s how I ‘fixed’ the ‘slow’ Internet (essentially LAN speed) connection at my desk.
I use a bunch of TP-LINK “Powerline” adapters around the house to get wired networking to each room.
“Well, that’s your first problem, Alan.
[Read More]My 'Must-Have' GNOME Extensions
Posted on Sat, Dec 26, 2020
| Alan Pope
I currently run Ubuntu 20.10 on my main desktop PC. GNOME Shell is the default desktop, and while it’s great, one very useful feature is the ability to supplement or alter the default behaviour with extensions and other add-ons. Ubuntu ships with a couple of extensions by default, but I’ve added a few on top, and this blog post details what they are and how to get them, in no particular order…
[Read More]Keyboards, Old and New
Posted on Fri, Dec 25, 2020
| Alan Pope
Over on r/mk you’ll find a community of mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. People who enjoy collecting, building and showing off their primary computer input device. Like any collector community, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the world of people passionate about something we all likely have used, but don’t feel especially invested in.
I’m certainly no MK afficianado, but I use keyboards all day every day, so like wine, I can appreciate a relatively good one, but I’ll also tolerate a cheap and crap one if pushed.
[Read More]Deliciously Easy Chicken Wings Recipe
Posted on Thu, Dec 24, 2020
| Alan Pope
I like chicken wings. I really like chicken wings. Before The Event, when I used to travel internationally, often to the USA, I’d frequently partake of some delicious wings. On one notable occasion in California, I think I had chicken wings every day for a week, from different restaurants. I like them a lot.
Ideally I feel chicken wings should be slathered in some kind of sauce, I’m not picky, there’s room for many sauces in this world.
[Read More]Snap Tips
Posted on Wed, Dec 23, 2020
(Last modified on Sat, Jul 17, 2021)
| Alan Pope
As you may or may not be aware, I work for Canonical on Snapcraft and Ubuntu. I use Ubuntu as my daily driver, and spend a lot of time maintaining snap packages, and listening to developers and users talk about software packaging, publishing, delivery and use.
Over time I’ve collected a bunch of virtual notes in my head. Much of it has been turned into documentation, but often the information is rather spread out.
[Read More]Goodbye Pebble - Hello FitBit
Posted on Tue, Dec 22, 2020
(Last modified on Thu, Dec 24, 2020)
| Alan Pope
I’ve never really been a massive watch nerd, my daily driver had been a Casio F-91W - the choice of the terrorist (apparently) - and retro classic.
I’d seen other nerds using Pebble smart watches (monochrome, more industrial looking), and absorbed their positive influences about the devices. I wasn’t super enamoured about the overall design of the watch though, and it appeared to have some limitations I wasn’t happy about.
[Read More]Blogging with Hugo
Posted on Mon, Dec 21, 2020
(Last modified on Thu, Jul 4, 2024)
| Alan Pope
Some years ago I switched my blog from Wordpress to Nikola. I wrote a blog post about the move, but within a year or so, I’d pretty much stopped blogging completely.
More recently I discovered Hugo, and used it for a couple of other sites I own. popeyspades is a simple blog to promote a game server I was running at the time.
Make A Linux App is a single-serving site that seeks to promote app development for Linux and discourage the proliferation of Linux distributions.
[Read More]Counting to 100 Million
Posted on Sun, Dec 20, 2020
(Last modified on Wed, May 1, 2024)
| Alan Pope
This article previously appeared on listed.to. I’ve moved it here to consolidate my blogging
About 10-15 years ago, back in the heady days of Hampshire Linux User Group, we had a Wiki. It ran a heavily patched version of UseModWiki that we’d modified to add anti-spam and anti-abuse protection. We’d affectionately called it “AbuseMod”. It’s still kinda there, but I don’t think the content is ever touched. We used it to co-ordinate meetings, take notes, and some other fun sillyness.
[Read More]Multiple GPUs in a Skull Canyon NUC
Posted on Sat, Dec 19, 2020
| Alan Pope
This article previously appeared on listed.to. I’ve moved it here to consolidate my blogging
Every 3 years at Canonical we get a laptop refresh fund. With it we can buy whatever devices we need to work. I used my last one to buy a ThinkPad T450. The most recent one arrived in November this year. I was considering replacing the ThinkPad with a desktop computer of some kind. I can certainly keep the T450 for portable work, but I mostly sit at the same desk all day, so figure I may as well get a desktop rather than a laptop.
[Read More]Straightforward Linux Backups with rsnapshot
Posted on Fri, Dec 18, 2020
| Alan Pope
This article previously appeared on listed.to. I’ve moved it here to consolidate my blogging
I hang around in technical support back-alleys. All too often a new person turns up asking for urgent help. Their system is catastrophically broken and they have no easy way to fix it. With a bit of help they can usually come to a fork in the road. Do they wipe and re-install, or keep fighting with the computer to get it working.
[Read More]Spotify on the Raspberry Pi 400
Posted on Thu, Dec 17, 2020
(Last modified on Fri, Dec 18, 2020)
| Alan Pope
I recently ordered a Raspberry Pi 400, I couldn’t resist. I’ve bought a few Raspberry Pi’s over the years, with a couple installed around the house. The Pi 400 struck me as quite the game-changer though, with a built in keyboard-enclosure and accessible connectors. The fact it reminded me of my youth with memories of the Sinclair Spectrum where everything is housed inside the keyboard helped a bit.
One omission which struck me as odd was the lack of audio jack.
[Read More]Akademy 2018 Trip Report
Posted on Wed, Aug 22, 2018
(Last modified on Wed, Sep 27, 2023)
|
I recently had the opportunity to attend Akademy - the annual world summit of KDE. This blog post covers my experience of the event, and is mostly a brain-dump memory aide. Akademy attracts KDE developers, enthusiast users and others from the wider Qt, KDE and distro communities. The event is a week-long in-person combination of talks and BoF (Birds of a Feather) sessions. This year Akademy was held at TU Wein in Vienna, Austria.
[Read More]