computoman

Added another piece of geek wear to the family line. This makes a third men’s accessory that can be created from old computer parts. Always looking for new ways to re-purpose what we have. The first accessory we came up with was the geek belt : Down where I live bolo’s or a sort of tie substitute are a big thing. so we came up with the geek bolo : In fact, you could use it to carry around a working network patch cable. Beauty and functionality combined. The newest member of the group is the Geek cuff links : Shame I do not have a French cuff shirt to really show them off. Doing all that work sort of makes me hungry. If you can hack computers, why not get into hacking food. You do not have to depend on the Pizza deliveryman. What is more interesting is that it is a way to fill in down time if you have any. Why not make your own pizzas. Two of my favorite pizzas are soda bread pizza 1 , soda bread pizza 2 , and good old yeast pizza . You may want to get into other hackin...

Yep, it was getting near Easter. of course it is another be careful of overeating time. Cheese cake is a big thing at Easter at our house. Looks store bought, but it is actually home made. Think mom’s hand mixer finally died in the making of this one. You never know what you can use in a different way. On rare occasions, we will eat at a fast food restaurant. Normally I do not drink coffee, but looking at the coffee stirrers there had to be another use for them. This is what I came up with: Now when I see a restaurant that has these, I will go in and get just a few for immediate needs. One program I am beginning to like is jNetMap. Originally I think it was just a java only version. Now it is at least for Debian a packaged version. Great way to see what is on your network especially for newbies like me. How to set it up . The map:

Hope to have an Ipad2 soon to show. Squeeze a video. I may have talked about this before, but I just wanted to spent a bit more time on it. I hear people complain all the time that they do not have enough space to hold all of their allegedly legitimate movie backups. I am concerned with space also but just for the movies we make ourselves. They are usually .avi format. Usually it takes two commands to get the files to the .ogv (ogg video) format. The .ogv formatted files can be at least 1/3 smaller than the original .avi file. Not only do the .avi files consume space but take a lot longer to upload. Usually it takes two commands to get the job done. I made a special command file to deal with converting one file to save a log of typing. sv.sh 01 echo Squeezing video of $1.avi 02 echo -------------------------------------------------- 03 echo Going from avi to mpeg. 04 ffmpeg -i $1.avi -b 100000k -ab 128k -ar 44100 $1.mpeg 05 06 echo Avi to mpe...

This sort of a summary of the projects we have done. (just some links). Do you really need an ereader? http://www.instructables.com/id/Ereader-is-optional-by-using-your-portable-music-p/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Ereader-is-optional-by-using-your-portable-music-p-1/ Every home needs a web server! http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheap-touchpad/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Uses-for-your-own-private-cloud/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Introduction-to-installing-web-apps/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Quicky-web-server-for-linux/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Quicky-web-server-for-MSWindows-XP/ Home automation basics: http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Automation-MSWindows-XP/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Linux-beginning-home-automation-on-a-server/ Other: http://www.instructables.com/id/Linux-ghetto-Tele-prompter/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Computerized-video-security-setup/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Setting-up-a-computer-based-DVR-with-Mythtv-for-l...

This might work on the Mac too if you have wget installed. Goal is to do language translation from te command line. Might be easier to just go to Google translate, but then you can use this program to interface with say not only a speech synthesis program but other software as well. If you have wget and the gnu utilities, you might be able to run it on an MSWindows box. $ ./lc.sh "el toro" es en the bull $ [code] #!/bin/bash // remove the previous line on a mac if test -z $3; then echo "Usage: $0 \" \" " echo "Translates string \" \" from to " echo "(CLI frontend to Google Translate)" else wget -qO- "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?v=1.0&q=$1&langpair=$2|${3:-$3}" | sed 's/.*"translatedText":"\([^"]*\)".*}/\1\n/'; fi echo "" [/code] No. Language Name Native Language Name Code 1 Afrikaans Afrikaans af 2 Albanian Shqip sq 3 Ar...

NOTE: Try this at your own risk. I will not be responsible for any issues. To my knowledge there are no traditional viruses within linux. You do have rootkits, but that is another subject (rtkhunter and chkrootkit can be used). What we want to do here is to be able to defend against Microsoft Windows viruses. This is especially important if you run WINE (wine is not an emulator), Crossover office, or other Microsoft compatible software on linux. It is also important if you need to detect for an MSWindows virus using a machine that normally can not be susceptible to MSWindows viruses. Case in point. I was over at my brothers place spending the night when I brother was frustrated because he could not get rid of an MSWindows virus on MSWindows 7 using the great Microsoft anti-virus product. Here is sort of an outline we did to deal with the problem. Apparently his daughter brought home a thumbdrive that had a Microsoft type virus. We plan to use Clamav for at least minimal ...

Can not believe all the spelling errors in the last post. Bear with me on that. So we discussed taking what we already have and putting it to use. Do not get me wrong. If you have the spare funds and need a new system, then go for it. There are more than three basic parts of a network. But for now, we will discuss just three. There are routers that connect you to your isp (internet service provider) and all the system on the network. They are really a combination bridge/router. Routers are sort of the traffic cop to the network. You have your desktop machines that you use directly to do your computing. The last devices are servers. These are computers you use indirectly. This is where you can store files you have created, files you want to access for say video and audio (movies, music and etcetera ), and lastly applications or software that you can access remotely. A good example is a web server such as the one you are accessing now to read the article. Servers are probably the ...

Bobby aka Bob has written several articles already, Maybe it is time for me to do one also. He mentioned that I was into robots. Actually my favorite projects are to re-purpose old computers for new re-uses. Doing robots is certainly one of those ends. Do not think I have bought a completely new computer in over five years. Would love to have a completely new machine. Several issues have me more and more into older equipment. First is that you can get the items free or very cheap. Despite the argument that older equipment requires more electricity, You can with proper planning not really use that much more in power for a single installation. For the corporate world where you would be using maybe thousands of systems, then you want the new greener equipment (being all things are equal). Secondly you are not really purchasing equipment any more but actually renting it. Look at the fine print of the EULA (End User Licensing agreement) agreement of you newer systems. Compani...

Bobby aka Bob has written several articles already, Maybe it is time for me to do one also. He mentioned that I was into robots. Actually my favorite projects are to re-purpose old computers for new re-uses. Doing robots is certainly one of those ends. Do not think I have bought a completely new computer in over five years. Would love to have a completely new machine. Several issues have me more and more into older equipment. First is that you can get the items free or very cheap. Despite the argument that older equipment requires more electricity, You can with proper planning not really use that much more in power for a single installation. For the corporate world where you would be using maybe thousands of systems, then you want the new greener equipment (being all things are equal). Secondly you are not really purchasing equipment any more but actually renting it. Look at the fine print of the EULA (End User Licensing agreement) agreement of you newer systems. Comp...