Once in awhile a package hangs out at an old version even after a system upgrade or two. This can cause odd things like that software portion not working like it should. In my case, an old salbabix ios PPA that was long defunct as Ubuntu 18.04 and later have no problem just plugging in updated iOS devices.
Continue reading “Removing old PPA from Ubuntu for stability and latest features”What3Words API in Laravel: Integrating geolocation finder in your web app
What3words is an interesting alternative to sharing around long latitude/longitude numbers, instead share just a few words!
The first step to integrating the api is signing up for a free API key. Then require the library using composer – in the main project folder run:
Continue reading “What3Words API in Laravel: Integrating geolocation finder in your web app”One more way to fight COVID-19… with your computer!
There’s a lot of computing power into finding a solution for COVID-19, and Digital Ocean just featured a new way to get involved – make your own droplet (virtual computer) to run distributed computations.
Continue reading “One more way to fight COVID-19… with your computer!”Online learning conferences
While many of us may not be going to favorite programming conferences, there are some interesting upcoming conferences to watch or watch the videos:
Digital Ocean TIDE – Going on now, a bit like the AWS free conference – a bit of an infomercial.
Knime – still a few upcoming live dates coming up on this one and the previous sessions are up, explaining this powerful machine learning tool.
May you go fourth and program!
Update –
200 OK conference – tomorrow, May 15th
Enthusiastcon – 10min talks June 6th
FastOrSlow – the new site checker from WordFence
Today the Wordfence developers announced the new fastorslow.com tool, a handy tool for seeing how fast your site is in various parts of the world. The Wordfence folks build a quite useful plugin used by many sites – and this one – to keep reduce risk of attack.
This new tool however can be used to see the performance of any type of public site and recommendations on speeding it up. It also would be a much easier way to time requests to a server like in the World Network Requests Measurement post.
Continue reading “FastOrSlow – the new site checker from WordFence”Mathematics with Pi – and earth measurement with network requests
In Ian Stewart’s book, Professor Stewart’s Casbook of Mathematical Mysteries, he writes about an easy way one might prove that the earth is not flat. His “easy” proof can be done by booking some flights and timing them… or, simply looking up actual flights from certain cities to other cities. If it is much much shorter for a certain flight from A to D while A to B to C to D in a nearly straight line is much longer, it’s effectively a proof you can go around the world without falling off…
Continue reading “Mathematics with Pi – and earth measurement with network requests”Building a Linux App part 7: Building an Installer File
There’s a big difference between having that quick python script set up with a GUI, and having a full desktop or mobile app ready to click install. In this post I’ll show the steps to build a Python script into an installable application.
Continue reading “Building a Linux App part 7: Building an Installer File”Google breaks all Google calendars for the public (Update: Fixed!)
As you may have noticed if you have Google Calendar anywhere on a public website, recently these went down – and are still down, for the general public. View a page with a Google calendar embed while logged out of Google (or try any other browser that is not logged in), and you will get a blank page. This has been reported with dozens of “me too” upvotes.
Continue reading “Google breaks all Google calendars for the public (Update: Fixed!)”Speech recognition made easy
There are numerous howtos for Raspberry Pi and other portable computer voice applications, like this one, but generally they are using Google’s voice api. This may work… when the wifi or network is working, but not only is this sending your voice to google, it requires payment for usage over a certain amount. Users of your robotic application may be not so thrilled when they see it is sending audio samples to Google, and that it does not even work if there is a wifi hiccup! Instead, let’s go through a simple on-device installation that works fairly accurately with no external dependencies!
Continue reading “Speech recognition made easy”Winlink setup on Linux in three easy steps!
One common misnomer about the amateur radio email network Winlink is that Winlink is just for Windows. Here is how to set up an account on Linux:
Continue reading “Winlink setup on Linux in three easy steps!”