computoman

Actually we used the gimp. (not funny, but educational) Before: Oops must have deleted the old pic, After just one change.

A generic script to show a version of the Linux distro installed. I like to use lsb_release, but that is not always available. release.sh [code] lsb_release >/dev/null 2>/dev/null if [ $? = 0 ] then lsb_release -ds | sed 's/^\"//g;s/\"$//g' # a bunch of fallbacks if no lsb_release is available # first trying /etc/os-release which is provided by systemd elif [ -f /etc/os-release ] then   source /etc/os-release if [ -n "${PRETTY_NAME}" ] then printf "${PRETTY_NAME}\n" else printf "${NAME}" [[ -n "${VERSION}" ]] && printf " ${VERSION}" printf "\n" fi # now looking at distro-specific files elif [ -f /etc/arch-release ] then printf "Arch Linux\n" elif [ -f /etc/gentoo-release ] then cat /etc/gentoo-release elif [ -f /etc/fedora-release ] then cat /etc/fedora-release elif [ -f /etc/redhat-release ] then cat /etc/redhat-release elif [ -f /etc/debian_version ] then printf "Debian GNU/Linu

A generic script to show a version of the Linux distro installed. I like to use lsb_release, but that is not always available. release.sh [code] lsb_release >/dev/null 2>/dev/null if [ $? = 0 ] then lsb_release -ds | sed 's/^\"//g;s/\"$//g' # a bunch of fallbacks if no lsb_release is available # first trying /etc/os-release which is provided by systemd elif [ -f /etc/os-release ] then   source /etc/os-release if [ -n "${PRETTY_NAME}" ] then printf "${PRETTY_NAME}\n" else printf "${NAME}" [[ -n "${VERSION}" ]] && printf " ${VERSION}" printf "\n" fi # now looking at distro-specific files elif [ -f /etc/arch-release ] then printf "Arch Linux\n" elif [ -f /etc/gentoo-release ] then cat /etc/gentoo-release elif [ -f /etc/fedora-release ] then cat /etc/fedora-release elif [ -f /etc/redhat-release ] then cat /etc/redhat-release elif [ -f /etc/debian_version ] then printf "Debian GNU/

Cold cuts are cheaper than pepperoni.

Here is a quick, inexpensive, and easy dish to feed 4-6 people who might show up unexpectedly. It is certainly a Latin (in the European sense) classic meal. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Ingredients: 1 - tablespoon cooking oil. 8 - large eggs. 1 - 29 ounce can of mixed vegetables. 1/2 - cup or so of your favorite cheese. (we use our own home made cheese). To taste: Garlic powder. Pepper. Salt. Required equipment: Oven with a broiler. Large heatproof pan or skillet. heat proof gloves or pads. Method: Preheat broiler to 350 - 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Put cooking oil in pan and warm to medium heat. Scramble eggs in a bowl. Add the seasoning's and stir to combine. Pour into the skillet. Add the vegetables and stir to combine so that everything is uniform. Cook for 4 to five minutes till the bottom is firm. Top with the cheese. Put skillet under the broiler. Let cook for four to five minutes. Check on it at least once every two minutes. Skillet will be HOT!!! When top is brown re

Gravy is so easy to make and inexpensive sauce for a lot of dishes. It probably was made most famous from being the usual topping for chicken fried steak. In this case we will use toast as the base. 1. Take several slices of bacon or other meat that will make grease when you fry it. 2. Fry the meat, but keep the stove on. (substitution: take solidified fat, lard, or butter) 3. Remove the meat (if you did not use the fat or butter) and put on some paper towels. 4. Remove all the oil except for about a tablespoon and a half. 5. Add about a tablespoon and a half of flour. mix well with a heat proof whisk. till it is light brown. 6. Add a cup or so of milk. 7. Stir till you get a nice thick brown slurry. 8. Add a little black pepper and mix it in. 9. Pour  the mixture on the biscuits. (you can use toast also just as well.) 10. Crumple the fried bacon on top. (if you fried the bacon) Eat and you are in high heaven.  One plus to this is that you are two steps away from having macaroni and

Do not you wish you could charge for food at home?

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to see. Not everyone has that gift. If you do not have that gift, does not mean you should be limited in using computers. Traditionally you had to let someone install linux for you, Several Linux distros now allow even the seeing and or hearing impaired to install and use Linux. As a test for myself, I took the Debian linux distro to see if I could install and use it blindfolded. As many times as I have done the text install of Linux, I did not do very well with the audio commanded install of Debian Linux (www.debian.org).  I am sure they have improved it. Then again they never advertized it as a distro for the blind. (You use the speech synthesis option).  Later you might need to install Orca if you want to use the gui. But then you can use the distros meant to be used for the handicapped  such as  Arch (http://talkingarch.tk/). They even have an audio not video tutorial.  You could also use Vinux  ( vinux project.org/) or Sonar (http://sonargnu

In the last article, using older computers that does not use the fancy graphics of today. You actually can do quite a bit with text such as movies, radar screens and etc. though the old favorite of using a computer as a clock.  Source for the program is aclock.c ( http://www.tenox.net/out/ ) Another generic clock: vtcclock  ( http://webonastick.com/vtclock/ ) Many command line users really appreciate text graphics to make their terminals more interesting especially at the point of login. Want to see more?  More at:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Graphics-in-a-text-world/

In the last article, using older computers that does not use the fancy graphics of today. You actually can do quite a bit with text such as movies, radar screens and etc. though the old favorite of using a computer as a clock.  Source for the program is aclock.c ( http://www.tenox.net/out/ ) Another generic clock: vtcclock  ( http://webonastick.com/vtclock/ ) Many command line users really appreciate text graphics to make their terminals more interesting especially at the point of login. Want to see more?  More at:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Graphics-in-a-text-world/

Not my video, but I thought it was prolific. Know many adults who might have the same reaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prSUUwEcTbM For reference only: http://www.apl2bits.net/2011/04/21/uthernet-online/

Not my video, but I thought it was prolific. Know many adults who might have the same reaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prSUUwEcTbM For reference only: http://www.apl2bits.net/2011/04/21/uthernet-online/

The Rasberry Pi or RPi for short is an amazing little unit. It can be a desktop, thin client, server, or a multitude of other devices. It is a sort of jack of all trades. At http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Jack-of-all-trades   we look at some of the options of what the RPi can do. One such option is to let the Rpi be a private eye or spy device. Compared to some the commercial video units, it is a bargain in price. Security is an important subject these days. With the RPi you can easily install yourself a spy setup without bringing in an expensive consultant. Check it out.

The Rasberry Pi or RPi for short is an amazing little unit. It can be a desktop, thin client, server, or a multitude of other devices. It is a sort of jack of all trades. At http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Jack-of-all-trades   we look at some of the options of what the RPi can do. One such option is to let the Rpi be a private eye or spy device. Compared to some the commercial video units, it is a bargain in price. Security is an important subject these days. With the RPi you can easily install yourself a spy setup without bringing in an expensive consultant. Check it out.

Coffee makers are not just for coffee anymore. You can actually make some interesting meals. Soup of course( http://www.instructables.com/id/Tuna-noodle-coffepot-soup/ ), but you can even make pasta from scratch. http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffee-maker-pasta/  But of course those are the standards. We can actually go a bit farther and even make cheese and other goodies ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffeemaker-meals-and-etc/ ). What will be your next coffeemaker meal?

Wondered if there was a way to get information about a web server from the web. After researching, I found an abandoned article with a script that fit the bill. From a few lines, the script has expanded quite nicely. The script is becoming more and more popular. You can get more information at: http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-linux-commands-from-a-web-page/ Reprint from an earlier post that applies. One of the things I get dismayed with is when going to the bookmarks and a link is dead. Also too, If I have several web servers I like to access, it would be nice to know if the site is up before I try to go to that site. Here we will use a small amount of PHP (another web language) that can be used with HTML just like javascript. Generally PHP is used only on servers, but you can run a local copy of it. PHP is available for most systems. Bookmarks really do not carry that much information per se. The above example only has one entry for sake of simplicity. What I would rea

Wondered if there was a way to get information about a web server from the web. After researching, I found an abandoned article with a script that fit the bill. From a few lines, the script has expanded quite nicely. The script is becoming more and more popular. You can get more information at: http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-linux-commands-from-a-web-page/ Reprint from an earlier post that applies. One of the things I get dismayed with is when going to the bookmarks and a link is dead. Also too, If I have several web servers I like to access, it would be nice to know if the site is up before I try to go to that site. Here we will use a small amount of PHP (another web language) that can be used with HTML just like javascript. Generally PHP is used only on servers, but you can run a local copy of it. PHP is available for most systems. Bookmarks really do not carry that much information per se. The above example only has one entry for sake of simplicity. W

A selection of collected cartoons.

Getting data without any hacking.

One thing I like about servers is that clients or users can run an application from a server. That means software only has to be installed and or upgraded once at a time. What a savings in support time. Places such as Sourceforge.net have many programs that can run from a web server. Three of the most common programs that people use are a spreadsheet, word processing. and a database. One such program although it was not in the package I used was a relational database. A flatfile database could be created in the spreadsheet. The program I am talking about is eyeOS. eyeOS is sort of a computer desktop for your browser.  That means the software should be platform independent.  That means you can generally use any touchpad, desktop, laptop, or anything with a browser. No per se special setup is needed in most cases on the user side. You do need a web server to host the software. A lamp, wamp, mamp, or similar type server should work. We use Apache a lot.The neat thing about w

Even the Sega Dreamcast runs nix and not MSWindows. Nix runs on almost anything. Linux is available for amd64 armel armhf i386 ia64 kfreebsd-i386 kfreebsd-amd64 mips mipsel powerpc sparc s390 s390x source multi-arch   Bsd is available for:   (openbsd) alpha Digital Alpha-based systems amd64 AMD64-based systems armish ARM-based appliances (by Thecus, IO-DATA, and others) hp300 Hewlett-Packard HP 9000 series 300 and 400 workstations hppa Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture (PA-RISC) systems i386 Standard PC and clones based on the Intel i386 architecture and compatible processors landisk IO-DATA Landisk systems (such as USL-5P) based on the SH4 cpu loongson Loongson 2E- and 2F-based systems, such as the Lemote Fuloong and Yeeloong, Gdium Liberty, etc. luna88k Omron LUNA-88K and LUNA-88K2 workstations macppc New World PowerPC-based machines, from the iMac onwards mvme68k Motorola 680x0-based VME systems mvme88k Motorola 881x0-based VME systems sgi

Even the Sega Dreamcast runs nix and not MSWindows. Nix runs on almost anything. Linux is available for amd64 armel armhf i386 ia64 kfreebsd-i386 kfreebsd-amd64 mips mipsel powerpc sparc s390 s390x source multi-arch   Bsd is available for:   (openbsd) alpha Digital Alpha-based systems amd64 AMD64-based systems armish ARM-based appliances (by Thecus, IO-DATA, and others) hp300 Hewlett-Packard HP 9000 series 300 and 400 workstations hppa Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture (PA-RISC) systems i386 Standard PC and clones based on the Intel i386 architecture and compatible processors landisk IO-DATA Landisk systems (such as USL-5P) based on the SH4 cpu loongson Loongson 2E- and 2F-based systems, such as the Lemote Fuloong and Yeeloong, Gdium Liberty, etc. luna88k Omron LUNA-88K and LUNA-88K2 workstations macppc New World PowerPC-based machines, from the iMac onwards mvme68k Motorola 680x0-based VME systems mvme

You can actually have a network without depending on the interneR. Some people might joke that it ia an internet of nothing aka ION. Now we hear about the IOT or internet of things.  Where you and anyone else can access your network from anywhere.  That may or may not be such a good thing.What can you do? You can build you own net where you  have more control and everything is accessed locally, so the internet being down does not affect what you do. Basic setup (part 1). h ttp://www.instructables.com/id/Your-personal-intranet-Part-1/ More goodies (part 2). http://www.instructables.com/id/Your-personal-intranet-Part-2/ For small offices and neighborhood setups, these ideas can be a boon to privacy.

You can actually have a network without depending on the interneR. Some people might joke that it ia an internet of nothing aka ION. Now we hear about the IOT or internet of things.  Where you and anyone else can access your network from anywhere.  That may or may not be such a good thing.What can you do? You can build you own net where you  have more control and everything is accessed locally, so the internet being down does not affect what you do. Basic setup (part 1). h ttp://www.instructables.com/id/Your-personal-intranet-Part-1/ More goodies (part 2). http://www.instructables.com/id/Your-personal-intranet-Part-2/ For small offices and neighborhood setups, these ideas can be a boon to privacy.

Need a good manual?

All guys have to have sexy walpaper.

Never hurts to have a second computer in case you need to access the internet when your main machine is down.

Game of thrones author George RR Martin has explained why he does all his writing on an obsolete disk operating system (DOS) computer - "because it does not correct his spelling" and other errors. He also said he feels more secure since the dos system is not connected to the internet. He does have a more modern computer to do the internet email, twitter and etc. More information at: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 For most writers, the internet provides them with virtually every tool they could ever need to write their respective narrative pieces. Word processors, screenwriting applications, even outlining programs exist (and with features ad infinitum) to make life easier, but  Game of Thrones   writer George R.R. Martin  takes a much, much,  much  simpler, old-fashioned approach to completing his work. In fact, it's downright ancient. No, I'm not talking "quill, ink, and a scroll of papyrus" ancient. I'm talking "Wo