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Recognising Ogg Vorbis streams in WinAmp

I'm working on a side project where I am broadcasting an OGG Vorbis stream using Icecast. Google Chrome played the stream, and so did VLC, but WinAmp was unable to. It connected to the stream with an HTTP 200 status but could not interpret it.

As it turns out WinAmp requires the mount point to have a file extension for it to detect the stream correctly, so updating the mount point to stream.ogg instead of stream in the icecast configuration did the job.

 

Understanding the adaptive Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is redefining gaming by adapting to the players environment. Unfortunately, it is widely misunderstood. It provides fun when used alone, with others, or with other Switch owners; in the living room, on the bus, at a desk. It an adaptive console, not a portable one. Any game that can be played like this is going to be a liberating experience, being optimised for how we live and can be played whenever we feel like.

So far, it seems the Nintendo Switch is widely misunderstood, even by game developers, reviewers and gamers alike. This is not surprising because Nintendo attempts to achieve something that no other gaming device has ever tried: gaming anywhere.

The moment everything fell in place for me was when I stopped thinking about Nintendo Switch as a portable console, but as an adaptive console.This explains why it does not become loads more powerful when docked, because that would favour playing on the TV over all the other ways. Nintendo has gone through amazing lengths to let you play together with other Switch owners even without a WiFi network, because it wants gaming everywhere.

A game that is not fun on the TV or playing with others on the same switch is limiting the switch experience and I think we will see a lot of games that are compromised in some way as game developers are getting to grips with the platforms adaptability.

The Switch is a careful balance between offline and online play, individual versus group play, and a study about where gaming can fit in our lives.

 

Banning the "Ban Crypto" Agenda

Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing.net writes:

Theresa May says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" -- and no doubt many in her party will agree with her, politically. But if they understood the technology, they would be shocked to their boots.

Perhaps we should no longer assume that politicians 'do not understand the internet' and assume they are asking for changes in the full understanding that they don't achieve the goal for which they're introduced.

As long as the situation that's being created is more favourable for them than the current one it's a net benefit.

Short-term politics is the biggest threat to UK society at the moment and the current government is particularly good at it.

 

Generating Atom feeds from your Lektor site

After quickstarting a Lektor site, a next obvious thing to do is to add a feed to the site's blog. Fortunately, Lektor has a growing ecosystem of plugins, one of them creates atom feeds.

Installation of lektor-atom

The plugin to install is lektor-atom, and is installed via the terminal:

lektor plugin add lektor-atom@0.2
lektor build

This adds a reference to the myproject.lektorproject file with the plugin and installs the plugin into the lektor pipeline.

Configure a feed

However, notice that after building the site no feed is generated! This is because no feeds have been setup yet.

Create a configs/atom.ini containing the following lines (full documentation)

[blog]
name = My Blog feed
source_path = /blog
item_model = blog-post
url_path = /blog/feed.xml

Change the url_path to suit your preferences. Trying to build now would result in an error: E blog/feed.xml (RuntimeError: To use absolute URLs you need to configure the URL in the project config.)

To resolve the build process myproject.lektorproject must be updated with two lines within the project section to indicate the site's live URL and an absolute URL style:

[project]
name = My Project
url = https://myproject.com

[packages]
lektor-atom = 0.2

The site can then build and the resulting feed can be accesssed from https://myproject.com/blog/feed.xml.

 

Vladimir Trump

Watching Trump’s presser, I had a feeling I’d seen it all before?—?while covering Vladimir Putin’s annual news conferences.

Source: A message to my doomed colleagues in the American media – Medium

 

Microsoft continous war on privacy

New controls are arguably an improvement, but data collection remains mandatory for most.

Source: Windows 10 Creators Update to rejig privacy settings in a move unlikely to please anyone | Ars Technica UK

 

After a while  Fusion Drives stop being fast when accessing files not recently modified as they are backed by 5400rpm drives.<p>#status </p>

 

You too can improve Firefox

Google Chrome is too dominating, this is not good for the web. So I'm switching back to Firefox, but it can be pretty ugly by default in places.

I like to apply the following tweaks to make it pretty again:

Screenshot-06_01_2017-10_48_22.png

Increase the Address Bar font size

Edit userChrome.css to make style changes to the Firefox UI. My Profile is located at %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Gibberish>, use the previous link to find the location on your system. Inside your profile create a chrome folder and inside that create a userChrome.css. Add the following line:

 { font-size: 13px; }

The possibilities are endless but this does the trick for me. Restart Firefox after saving the file.

Remove unwanted buttons and the searchbox

Right click on any of the toolbar buttons > Customize... to bring up the Customize Firefox screen. Remove unused buttons and the search box (search via the address bar instead) by dragging them to the Additional Tools and Features panel --  or the hamburger menu panel to access them with a click.

Make the tabs square again

Firefox tabs have this rounded look to them, which I find displeasing: install the Squared Australis Tabs addon to add square corners instead.

Hide the menu bar

Did you know you can access the menu bar by pressing the Alt key on your keyboard? The menu bar is visible by default but it is not frequently accessed, so press Alt+V or bring up the View menu bar menu and untick the Menu Bar and optionally the Bookmark Toolbar items.

Hide bookmark toolbar item names

You can blank out the Name of a bookmark to have it display just the icon in the toolbar, which tidies up those frequently accessed sites.

 

Life on Earth is Dying

I would quote part of this article but you should just click the title and read all of it.

 

Just Walk Out technology

Amazon Go, shopping without checkouts:

Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world’s most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go!

With the amount of recorded prior art they will find it difficult to pantent the Just Walk Out technology  ;-)

 

Building on temporary foundations

Just came across an interesting perspective on frameworks by Timothy Perrett:

It is imperative to understand that the need for composability in our software tools is an absolute requirement. If we as an industry have any hope of not repeating ourselves time and time again, we have to change our ways.

I definately agree that we're doomed to keep making the same mistakes if we're building on top of frameworks and then switching them out for a different one, which I hadn't considered before.

 

Updating Homebrew for macOS Sierra

If you've just upgraded to Sierra and previously had Homebrew installed you may find that it no longer works because of the stricter security feature in macOS. In order to get Homebrew back up and running you need to execute the following commands in your terminal (thanks thehitmaniptf):

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local
xcode-select --install

The first command simply gives your local user account ownership of /usr/local (where brew installs things). The second command updates the Xcode command line tools without which Homebrew cannot compile packages.

Once this is done you can successfully update Homebrew as normal, and diagnose any remaining issues:

brew update
brew doctor

After running this you will receive instructions on how to restore the permissions on /usr/local as after updating Homebrew no longer will use this path.

Update 6th Nov, 2016: When using cask you might get told to update the cask room location:

sudo mv /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom /usr/local

 

How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

I think we have stumbled upon the reason why there are no new Macs. Apple was wasting resources on the car.

Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project.

[..]

Zadesky handed the reins to his boss, Dan Riccio, adding to responsibilities that already included engineering annual iPhone, iPad, and Mac refreshes.

Source: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit - Bloomberg

 

Your job affects your mind. Disadvantage of being a developer: we must be so focused on the task at hand that we evict everything else from our memory.<p>#status </p>

 

Dropbox Modifies TCC.db to Give Itself Accessibility Access

Dropbox was using a sql attack on the tcc database to circumvent Apple’s authorization policy

Another issue like this and a lot of people will switch to iCloud Drive.

 

How to signup for Flickr without disclosing your mobile number

I was looking to setup a Flickr account and noticed that it requires you to enter a mobile phone number to sign up. I prefer not to disclose this information to third parties so I looked for a solution. Unfortunatley, a lot of information is out of date as Yahoo! (which owns Flickr, and which is the service you sign up to so you can login) turned off third party signups back in 2014. However I found a way...

To complete this process you will need to have a non-yahoo email address. I recommend you try Hover and register your own domain with email (such as your surname), so that you will never have to change it when your email provider closes up shop.

Follow these steps:

  1. Instead of signing up via Flickr, Sign up for a Yahoo!'s account via their website.
  2. Notice that a mobile number is required. Follow the I'd rather use my own email address link just below the email address input.
  3. Notice you can now sign up with your own email and a mobile phone number is no longer required.
  4. Choosing your password and create a Yahoo! account.

Now you can use the credentials to sign into Flickr!

 

 

Painless Lektor Setup in Less Than 5 Minutes

Two technologies that I have can really recommend you try out - Lektor and Cloud9 - can be used together to start a static site or blog in a matter of minutes. If you want to try out the power of Lektor without leaving a trace on your machine then follow this quick setup.

Lektor is a flexible and powerful static content management system for building complex and beautiful websites out of flat files — for people who do not want to make a compromise between a CMS and a static blog engine.

Cloud9 combines a powerful online code editor with a full Ubuntu workspace in the cloud.

Because every Cloud9 workspace is also a Docker container, you have full access to a ubuntu system with terminal access. We can use this to install a development Lektor install and work on our static website as follows:

  1. Create a new Cloud9 workspace with the Python template, as Lektor is written in Python.
  2. Delete the ex50 folder
  3. In the bash tab of the new workspace, install lektor by running: curl -sf https://www.getlektor.com/install.sh | sh
  4. Once this completes, start a new project: lektor quickstart
  5. Create a new runner (Run > Run With > New Runner) with the following contents (replace myproject):
    {
    "cmd" : ["lektor", "server", "-p", "8080", "-h", "0.0.0.0"],
    "info" : "Started $project_path",
    "working_dir": "/home/ubuntu/workspace/myproject"
    }
  6. Press the Run button to start the server, and Preview > Preview Running Application to browse the Lektor site.

That's all there is to it, you can continue with the Lektor Quickstart instructions.

 

 

 

I don't know what this implies.

<a href="https://vandragt.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2016/08/img_0685.jpg"><img class="alignnone wp-image-2285" src="https://vandragt.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2016/08/img_0685.jpg" alt="" width="336" height="416" /></a><p>#status </p>

 

Nvidia unveils GTX 1060: Faster than a GTX 980 for £220

1080p gamers, would-be VR explorers, and e-sports players who crave hundreds of frames per second look no further: the GTX 1060 is the graphics card to buy.

Looks like the card to get if you're not in the market for an ATI card.

 

Don't think you want to make it this simple to pipe potentially unsafe input to the shell  <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.execution.php">http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.execution.php</a><p>#status </p>