As ever, mostly notes to myself. RAR is a silly and proprietary format. I prefer free software and I find that ZIP files are smaller and decompress faster. Not everyone agrees, and that's fine. Assuming you've downloaded a RAR file and want to convert it to ZIP, what's the easiest way? Install P7Zip sudo apt-get install p7zip-full p7zip-rar Script This basic bash script will Extract a…
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We're entering a golden era for small-batch artisinal hardware. Anyone with an idea and a modicum of talent can build hardware and get it shipped around the world at a reasonable price. Enter "The ReSpeaker" - an open source alternative to Amazon's Echo. It promises ultimate hackability, speech recognition, and IoT control, wrapped in a cheap single-board design. ReSpeaker is an open…
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This is a sponsored post by LOPOO UK who've asked me to review their Oittm Bluetooth Headphones. There's a lot of technology packed in for £19.99. Bluetooth 4.1 - compatible with Android and iPhone. cVc noise cancellation - for improved call quality. A physically tiny 70 mAh battery - good for around 3-6 hours of use. I found it fully charged in around 2 hours. Flat cable …
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Mostly notes to myself :-) Here is a quick way to add watermarks to photos and videos. All Linux command line based - so perfect if you've got a lot of images you want to manipulate. Here is a delightful photo I've taken of a bee covered in pollen. I want to add a little copyright notice to it in order to discourage people using it without permission. This command uses imagemagick's…
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Loading large 3D Models in the browser is extremely resource intensive. 2D images are trivial to resize and resample with negligible loss of perceived quality. 3D resizing is complex. As part of my "Pirate Museum" I wanted to display 3D scans of statues using WebVR. The only problem is, these files are huge. Take The Dancing Faun - at full resolution, that's around 230MB. Even on fast…
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I've been trying to find the perfect Linux laptop. I need something small, light, powerful, and with an ergonomic keyboard. Hmmm... Perhaps I don't need a laptop. I could use a tablet and my new Bluetooth keyboard... Enter BQ's Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition. It promises the Ubuntu experience in a convenient tablet package. I wanted to love this tablet. But it is so unbelievably bad that I'm…
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I like to listen to music while I work. I find - especially in an open plan office - that it is an essential aid to concentration. That said, I find music with lyrics particularly problematic as my brain prefers to concentrate on the words rather than the task in hand. On long flights, I often use a white noise generator to drown out sound. I've recently started listening to random music. A…
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I love my keyboards. I mean, I have an unhealthy obsession with them. I spend a lot of time typing and the cramped keyboards which come with most laptops and MacBooks just don't cut it for me. Their poor ergonomics leave my wrists in pain. For years I was a devotee of the Microsoft 4000 Keyboard. It's a big old beast - and that's its main drawback; it's just too large to carry around. It…
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The good news follow-up rarely gets as much attention as the original bad-news story. Earlier this month I accidentally kicked off a minor kerfuffle over whether BMW was respecting the GPL. Their i3 car contains a huge amount of Open Source Software and there was some confusion as to BMW's compliance with the licence terms. I took a look through the car's user interface and, hidden away, was…
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I've got three Raspberry Pis around my house. Well... at least... I think I do. I can certainly ping three of them. I know the physical location of two of them... It's a testament to the success of the Raspberry Pi. Anyone with £30 to spare can pick one up and start hacking. Want to build an IoT fishtank? Start with a Pi. Need to monitor air pollution? Start with a Pi. Have a vague idea...? You …
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I accidentally caused a little brouhaha last week - for which I would like to apologise. In my blog post about BMW's unencrypted software updates, I said: Judging from the files, it would appear that the infotainment system is made by Magneti Marelli with components by Wind River, AutoSAR, and Nvidia Tegra. Looking at the copious mentions of systemd and freedesktop it's a Linux system! …
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Selfie sticks - like most modern inventions - are utter tosh. But they've rapidly brought down the price of Bluetooth buttons. So who am I to complain? Let's take the venerable AB Shutter 3 - You can find it on Amazon for around £2 including postage - or around $2 on AliExpress. Frankly, that's stupidly cheap. OK, let's put this to work as something other than a vanity clicker! There are no …
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