Can't wait to see this film!

#life #link

Ubuntu 17.10 comes with python3 3.6.3 installed by default but not pip and pipenv. We can install install pip systemwide and pipenv into the user local bin so we can use all the convenience when working with our python projects:

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -O /tmp/get-pip.py
sudo python3 /tmp/get-pip.py
pip3 install --user pipenv
echo "PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

Sources: Installing Python 3 on Linux; pip installation; Installing pipenv; How to permanently set PATH on Linux

Update 9 Nov 2017: replaced curl with wget, thanks Peter

#python #technology

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.

#streaming

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.

#games

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.

#security

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.

#development #lektor

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

#life #link

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

#link #windows

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:

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:

#urlbar { 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.

#web

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

#life #link

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  ;-)

#link #technology

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.

#development #link

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

#macos

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

#link #technology

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.

#link #technology

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!

#web

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.

#python

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.

#games #link

I wrote this little script and thought it might be useful for others. WorkLog.py allows you to keep track of what you are working on by writing a timestamped message to a CSV file.
It turns out it helps me stay in tack during a long day of work.

I've put the latest code on GitHub

A great little bit of python code. It requires Python 3. Then just run the file.

#python #worklog

I've been using Traktor for years now as my deejaying solution and broadcasting tool. The one missing feature on the broadcasting side is that it can only stream directly to Icecast servers, lacking the ability to stream to SHOUTcast based servers. Most servers use the SHOUTcast streaming protocol which grew popular through the MP3 movement back around the turn of the century. We will setup a transcoding link to enable streaming to SHOUTcast servers.

This guide will focus on OS X but on a general level is also applicable to Windows users.

This replaces my previous guide at https://sites.google.com/site/traktorshoutcast/

Overview

We will need the do the following things:

1. Install Homebrew, a package manager to help set things up.(OS X)
2. Install and setup Icecast, a streaming server that will accept the Traktor stream. (aka local streaming server)
3. Install and setup LiquidSoap, a transcoder that will connect to the local stream, and broadcast it in SHOUTcast format.
4. Configure Traktor's broadcasting settings to point to the local streaming server.

Also useful is to keep the SHOUTcast stream (remote stream) details to connect to at hand (host, port, password).

1) Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a terminal package manager to add / remove / update OS X software and compile it from source code for us, so we don't have to.

Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t.

To install, follow the directions on http://brew.sh. Currently (as of Feb 16) that says:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Run /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Follow any instructions about the Xcode commandline tools.

After everything is setup you can run brew update to update your formulae, brew upgrade to upgrade to their latest versions, and brew doctor to diagnose any issues with your particular installation. Keep the terminal open for the next step.

2) Install and setup Icecast

Icecast is a streaming media server which [...] can be used to create an Internet radio station or a privately running jukebox and many things in between.

We will setup the local streaming server so that we can connect Traktor and the transcoder to it.

Install

In the terminal window you left open, run brew install icecast.

If I remember correctly, everything should go smoothly and before long you'll get a message saying it's successfully installed.

Configuration

To keep the configuration files we are about to create nicely together, create a broadcast folder somewhere (I used ~/Music/Broadcast).

I have prepared a very simple configuration file for you, download it from https://gist.github.com/svandragt/f7ecb720416a68f096a1 (right click the raw button and select Download Linked File As.. and save it as icecast.xml in the broadcast folder you just created).

• This configuration file is insecure and uses the default Icecast passwords, please change them as I have done so that others on your network cannot login and disconnect your stream whilst broadcasting.
• Notice that the mount point is /traktor.ogg, on port 8000, on localhost (your own machine).
• I've taken out everything that is not necessary to keep the file as simple as possible. There are all kinds of settings you can add, see http://www.icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html">http://www.Icecast.org/docs/Icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html

You won't have to change the contents of this file, apart from the passwords.
This configuration creates a mount point on http://localhost:8000/traktor.ogg for Traktor and LiquidSoap to connect to.

Starting and Stopping the Local Streaming Server

In the terminal window, in your broadcast folder, run icecast -c icecast.xml. It should show a few warnings but no errors, and your local streaming server is now running. Stop it now by pressing ctrl+c.

3) Install and setup LiquidSoap

Our flagship is liquidsoap, a swiss-army knife for multimedia streaming, notably used for netradios and webtvs. Liquidsoap is a powerful and flexible language for describing your streams. It offers a rich collection of operators that you can combine at will, giving you more power than you need for creating or transforming streams. But liquidsoap is still very light and easy to use, in the Unix tradition of simple strong components working together.

We will install the program and setup a flow (configuration) to connect to the local streaming server, and broadcast it to the remote stream.

It should have been simple to install using brew, but unfortunately it was not. After several days of debugging here is a working set of instructions I produced.

Install

In the terminal window you left open, we will run the following commands:

1. brew tap drfill/liquidsoap -- This enabled homebrew to install it.
2. brew install --env=std liquidsoap --with-shout -- this installs LiquidSoap using the standard build environment with shoutcast support

Grab a drink. After a while hopefully all works fine. I noticed that LiquidSoap is now recommending OPAM to install it so you could try that if this doesn't work for you. (http://liquidsoap.fm/download.html) - I have not tried it.

Configuration

As before, I have created a very simple flow. You will need to setup one flow per destination stream so if you play at multiple radio stations / SecondLife clubs then you will need multiple flows.

Download it from https://gist.github.com/svandragt/af43c07d5842c9c429d5 (right click the raw button and select Download Linked File As.. and save it as example.liq in the broadcast folder).

This time you have to edit it, to add the remote stream details. Change the following lines to suit your purposes:

• output_host = "example.com"
• output_port = 8124
• output_pass = "mypassword"

The configuration above is for broadcasting to a SHOUTcast server at http://example.com:8124 (using the password mypassword). Leave the rest of the file alone or make a copy and start experimenting LATER, see http://liquidsoap.fm/documentation.html. LiquidSoap is very powerful.

Starting and Stopping the Transcoder

In the terminal window, in your broadcast folder, run liquidsoap example.liq. It will start showing a lot of messages, and because you are not currently broadcasting also some errors. Stop it now by pressing ctrl+c.

Traktor

Start Traktor and open the Preferences menu item. Open the Broadcasting tab.

Use the following information to point to the local streaming server:

Server settings:

• Address: localhost
• Port: 8000
• Mount path: traktor.ogg
• Password: hackme (but you changed this, right)
• Format: Ogg Vorbis, 44100 Hz, 192 kBit/s (highest quality, bottom option)

You can enter whatever you like in the Metadata Settings.

In Traktor, click the broadcast button (the little attenna). It will flash because the local streaming server isn't running and therefore Traktor cannot connect to it. Whenever Icecast is running but the button is still flashing, check that the password and other connection details match.

For now, click it again to stop broadcasting.

All together now

Before you start streaming:

1. Start Icecast and keep it running.
2. In Traktor, click the broadcast button and confirm its not flashing.
3. Open another terminal window / tab in the broadcast folder for the next step.

When you start streaming:

1. Start LiquidSoap with the flow of your remote stream. Keep it running.
2. Start deejaying!

When you are finished

1. Stop broadcasting with Traktor.
2. Stop liquidSoap to let the next DJ on the stream.
3. Stop Icecast because nothing is connected to it now.

Final thoughts

I hope this helps anyone having trouble deejaying online, I enjoy it very much and if you'd like to listen to deep house / electronica, please listen to my mixes.

#macos #music