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Reformatting a PDF
by Mark Rogers 03 Jun '19

03 Jun '19

On the Royal Mail website is a "handy" price guide available as a PDF: http://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/Royal-Mail-Our-Prices-March-20… It's only actually "handy" if you have a weird printer (or at least very unusual sized paper). I'm not sure what size/shape you'd call it but it would go into a DL envelope without folding... What I'd like to do is split the individual pages out and merge them to get three (maybe four) "pages" per A4 sheet so that I can print it on my very normal A4 printer. Suggestions? This is an annual headache and I'm fed up with a different manual solution every year. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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applets for mint
by Bev Nicolson 23 May '19

23 May '19

Ubuntu had a bunch of applets too of course but amongst them was one that enabled you to copy and paste fractions, copyright symbols, accents (French, Spanish, etc). Very useful. There doesn't appear to be anything similar for Mint, though. Ideas? Bev.

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Archiving photos/media from Android phone to Linux PC
by Mark Rogers 20 May '19

20 May '19

I have a Linux desktop (Ubuntu) which already gets backed up and has a decent amount of disk space on it. And I have several Android phones (mine, my wife's, etc) all of which accumulate photos and videos taken on the phone eating into storage and never getting archived off the device or properly backed up. What I want to achieve is that when at home on Wifi the phone will automatically sync all photos and video to my desktop and delete older (configurable) ones of the devices to free up space. (What I really want is to know with 100% confidence whether something is backed up so I can decide to delete it if it's taking up a lot of space; usually paranoia kicks in and I hang onto things on the device, and of-course then I run out of space...) Whilst I will happily manage the desktop end, the phone end needs to be "wife friendly", ie there needs to be an app that will do it for her. The Internet isn't short of suggestions but really I'm looking for advice from others who have done this. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th May
by Viperfang 06 May '19

06 May '19

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th May at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Sync to USB before unmount
by Mark Rogers 02 May '19

02 May '19

I have a script which writes data to an SD card connected via USB, then umounts it. The data is several GB in size so it hangs at the umount stage while the writes complete, and I want to give user feedback. (Note: I have had no luck whatsoever using sync to force the data to sync first, it always returns immediately.) At the moment I send umount into the background and grep /proc/meminfo for a "Dirty" value which I display, repeating until the umount command closes. This is reliable and fairly meaningful, but because it takes a few minutes is throwing a kernel INFO message into syslog: INFO: task umount:17976 blocked for more than 120 seconds Ideally I would just wait for writes to complete before even trying to umount, but I can't see a way to do that. Is there a way to determine if (say) /dev/sdc is still busy, and if so how much data is pending? Or any other suggestions? Current code (modified a bit for clarity in posting): echo -e "\n\nWaiting for writes to complete" sudo umount /dev/sdc[1-9] & while jobs -r | grep 'Running' > /dev/null ; do pending=$(grep -Po 'Dirty: *\K.*' /proc/meminfo) echo -ne "\rBuffer remaining: ~$pending " sleep 1 done echo -e "\rUnmounted - you can now remove the disk. " -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Local mirrors
by Bev Nicolson 30 Apr '19

30 Apr '19

I've swapped to Cinnamon Mint on a laptop (much better) and it's asking me whether I want to use a local mirror for updates. I've goggled so I now know what they are. What I'd like to know is, are there any downsides to using them? Bev.

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 3rd May.
by Viperfang 30 Apr '19

30 Apr '19

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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SDRplay
by Nev Young 20 Apr '19

20 Apr '19

Are there any radio hams hereabouts? Have any of you managed to make an SDRplay RSP1 or RSP1A work with linux? If so; how? Nev M0NFY (sorry if this got sent twice)

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LMS physical volume control for players
by John Cohen 21 Mar '19

21 Mar '19

Hi all I've got a logitech media server (LMS) setup with pi's all over the house that can synchronise playback from spotify and my personal music library. I use tablets & phones to control volume of the different players, as well as a Mycroft instance I can ask music requests and basic playback commands. All good so far... I'd love to have something physical like a remote control or better a dial/potentiometer on a wall to control volume on each player. Controlling the players with wifi is easy: some simple commands via http on any browser is all it takes: http://arduino-projects4u.com/squeezebox/ Can anyone thing of a creative/cheaper solution that avoids having to buy arduino shields & boards to achieve something like a physical knob or remote for volume control? cheers John

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DNS Provider recommendations
by Karl Foley 19 Mar '19

19 Mar '19

Long time subscriber, but not a huge contributor! It's come to that time of year again when my domain needs to be renewed. Turns out Daily was taken over by TSOHost since my domain was renewed three years ago. Not really had any issues, but initially thought the renewal invoice was a scam. I got a bit miffed when the renewal invoice was for more than I could renew the domain on their website for. Not really looking for the cheapest, just something that is reliable for hosting my GSuite linked domain. Any recommendations please? -- ATB, Karl

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Profiles woe
by Bev Nicolson 12 Mar '19

12 Mar '19

I'm still wrestling with this I'm afraid. When I try to start Thunderbird on the laptop it says it can't find the profile (renamed) though there should be one for it to use. I'm not sure how it isn't linked. How do I fix this and do you need more info? I have not touched Firefox. Bev.

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 14th March
by Viperfang 12 Mar '19

12 Mar '19

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 14th March at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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What's the easiest way to copy bits of several PDFs onto one page?
by Chris Green 06 Mar '19

06 Mar '19

I have a multilingual manual for a new tractor mounted mower. It's almost unreadable because the 'multilingual' is done by having five columns of text (one of each language) down the pages. So I thought it would be easy to scan just the English columns and paste them together, five columns to a page, to make an English only version of the manual. It's not at all easy! There are very few programs that will 'merge' PDF pages and those that do seem to assume one is just trying to pack two or four complete PDF pages onto one sheet to save paper. So can anyone suggest how I can do this? I can very easily scan the English bits as required, what I need is a handy tool for putting a number of scanned images onto a page. I was trying to do this using PDF but it may well be that other file types would be easier, I can scan to JPG, TIFF, PNM, etc. easily enough. -- Chris Green

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st March.
by Viperfang 26 Feb '19

26 Feb '19

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Booting from a dvd
by Bev Nicolson 22 Feb '19

22 Feb '19

So I thought I get going on installing Cinnamon Mint in this laptop. Plugged it in, got the dvd in but it just booted to Windows 7 instead. It knew the dvd was there and what was on it but that was as far as it went. How to I investigate why it's doing this and/or how do I get it to install Mint? Ta. Bev.

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Re: [ALUG] main Digest, Vol 164, Issue 10
by Al 22 Feb '19

22 Feb '19

I wouldn't try to mix EFI and BIOS in a dual boot system. Did it, with Mint, and without being able to recall the detail, it was a mess, and I recovered by reinstalling Windows and then installing Mint in EFI mode. Fortunately the Windows registration code had been stored someplace mysterious and invisible, so the reinstallation just picked it up fine, and then Mint went in just fine after ooting from the DVD in EFI mode and then doing the install after that, and everything was fine. I have a vague recollection of having to create the EFI partitions again manually. Or maybe that was some other misadventure with EFI. The other experience I have in this matter is, never, never update the BIOS. I did, having foolishly listened to advice that it was necessary, which it was not, and the main board was hosed, and the only way to recover was finding a shop somewhere in the Himalayas north of Watford who extracted the chip and reinstalled it. There is a lot to be said for old main boards that just do BIOS! Al On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 12:00:02 +0000 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > Send main mailing list submissions to > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > You can reach the person managing the list at > main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..."

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Setting up laptop
by Bev Nicolson 20 Feb '19

20 Feb '19

So, I have a new to me laptop. How do I sensibly and safely transfer passwords, bookmarks etc onto it? I've tried to back them up before now (Firefox's 'import bookmarks from html' option) but I'm not wholly confident about that method. Step by step please. And is my assumption that because it has more memory and is newer than my current pc that a 64-bit OS (Cinnamon Mint if you’re interested) reasonable? Bev P.S. For Steve: sadly I think the scanner has gone on to the choir invisible...

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Re: [ALUG] [WLUG_Relay] embedded iframes in Firefox etc
by Phil Thane 16 Feb '19

16 Feb '19

Fixed it. My Firefox runs Ghostery to block trackers and it stops the frame loading. Had to whitelist my own site! -- PhilOn Sat, 2019-02-16 at 13:08 +0000, Phil Thane wrote: > Dunno if they are deprecated but redirecting would take users off my > site. The long term plan is to make a 'sticky' blog post showing my > location with rolling, or floating, need below. > > > Are frames Depricated Phil, not sure... > > > > What about a page re-direction script ? > > > > Ken > > > > On 16/02/2019 12:13, Phil Thane wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > Following my questions about embedding a GPS tracker into my > > > website > > > I've followed Chris Dawkins (ALUG) suggestion and installed GPS > > > Tracker > > > 2 on my phone and created an account on Greenalp. This works OK > > > (I had > > > to wait for Greenalp to unlock my frame for embedding) on > > > Chromium but > > > not on Firefox (my usual browser) or Vivaldi. In both cases I > > > get a > > > message to the effect that map has loaded, please refresh the > > > page. A > > > normal page refresh doesn't make any difference to the frame > > > which > > > shows the Greenalp home page not my map. Is there some cunning > > > code I > > > can add to the iframe code to force a reload of the frame > > > contents? > > > I've tried searching online but not as yet found anything > > > useful. > > > > > > -- > > > Phil > > > Relay mailing list > > > Relay(a)wrexham-lug.org > > > http://wrexham-lug.org/mailman/listinfo/relay_wrexham-lug.org > _______________________________________________ > Relay mailing list > Relay(a)wrexham-lug.org > http://wrexham-lug.org/mailman/listinfo/relay_wrexham-lug.org

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embedded iframes in Firefox etc
by Phil Thane 16 Feb '19

16 Feb '19

Hi, > Following my questions about embedding a GPS tracker into my website I've followed Chris Dawkins (ALUG) suggestion and installed GPS Tracker 2 on my phone and created an account on Greenalp. This works OK (I had to wait for Greenalp to unlock my frame for embedding) on Chromium but not on Firefox (my usual browser) or Vivaldi. In both cases I get a message to the effect that map has loaded, please refresh the page. A normal page refresh doesn't make any difference to the frame which shows the Greenalp home page not my map. Is there some cunning code I can add to the iframe code to force a reload of the frame contents? I've tried searching online but not as yet found anything useful. -- Phil

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GSM tracking
by Christopher Dawkins 14 Feb '19

14 Feb '19

Try www.greenalp.com It's worked well for me. An example is under 'tracking' on http://cchd.co.uk/uganda but beware with images - the server is a raspberry pi on a 400K upload line. On Wed, 6 Feb 2019 at 12:00, <main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk> wrote: > Today's Topics: > > 1. realtime GSM mapping (Phil Thane) > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 10:39:45 +0000 > From: Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> > To: North Wales LUG <northwales(a)mailman.lug.org.uk>, Wrexham LUG > <relay(a)wrexham-lug.org>, main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: [ALUG] realtime GSM mapping > Message-ID: <1548758385.27559.18.camel(a)pthane.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hello all, > > As the N Wales and Wrexham recipients of this will know, I'm not a > developer, the Anglian recipients probably don't know me at all but I > moved here a couple of years ago. Over the last 15 years I've written a > lot about Linux and FOSS for various magazines and websites, but I'm no > expert, so bear with me. > > Now I'm mostly retired I have a river/canal cruiser. Last year I did a > single-handed trip of about 10 days in each direction to a boat show. > So that my family could keep track I enabled 'find my phone' on my > mobile and gave them the login details. OK as far as it goes but not > ideal obvs. I also blogged each day and then wrote it all up for a boat > magazine. This year I plan a longer trip - to the Llangollen > International Eisteddfod - about 3 weeks each way. I've sorted out WIFi > and a laptop charger on the boat so I can blog better, now I'd like to > improve the mapping. The ideal would be a map I can embed in a WP page > on my website, that updates every few minutes as I travel. GPS from > either my phone, or if really necessary a dedicated GPS device. > > Does anyone know if such is already possible using OSM + plugins etc? > I've had a quick look online but most advice refers to Google maps. > Most of the rest gets very technical very quickly. Goes over my head. > > Plan B, is there a dev out there looking for a project? Unpaid and > 'free' naturally! Would it feasible to create something like > FlightRadar' that displayed boat positions on inland waterways? There > is already marinetraffic.com for shipping, but that's way too big. I'm > thinking of something boat owners could subscribe to that was available > online and capable of being embedded in a webpage. > > -- > Phil >

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 14th February
by Viperfang 11 Feb '19

11 Feb '19

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 14th February at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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OT Raspberry Pi
by Bev Nicolson 08 Feb '19

08 Feb '19

I thought folk might like to know that there is a Raspberry Pi shop opening tomorrow (9am) in Cambridge in the Grand Arcade. Bev.

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realtime GSM mapping
by Phil Thane 08 Feb '19

08 Feb '19

Hello all, As the N Wales and Wrexham recipients of this will know, I'm not a developer, the Anglian recipients probably don't know me at all but I moved here a couple of years ago. Over the last 15 years I've written a lot about Linux and FOSS for various magazines and websites, but I'm no expert, so bear with me. Now I'm mostly retired I have a river/canal cruiser. Last year I did a single-handed trip of about 10 days in each direction to a boat show. So that my family could keep track I enabled 'find my phone' on my mobile and gave them the login details. OK as far as it goes but not ideal obvs. I also blogged each day and then wrote it all up for a boat magazine. This year I plan a longer trip - to the Llangollen International Eisteddfod - about 3 weeks each way. I've sorted out WIFi and a laptop charger on the boat so I can blog better, now I'd like to improve the mapping. The ideal would be a map I can embed in a WP page on my website, that updates every few minutes as I travel. GPS from either my phone, or if really necessary a dedicated GPS device. Does anyone know if such is already possible using OSM + plugins etc? I've had a quick look online but most advice refers to Google maps. Most of the rest gets very technical very quickly. Goes over my head. Plan B, is there a dev out there looking for a project? Unpaid and 'free' naturally! Would it feasible to create something like FlightRadar' that displayed boat positions on inland waterways? There is already marinetraffic.com for shipping, but that's way too big. I'm thinking of something boat owners could subscribe to that was available online and capable of being embedded in a webpage. -- Phil

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st February.
by Viperfang 29 Jan '19

29 Jan '19

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Running multiple commands "securely" with one password
by Mark Rogers 25 Jan '19

25 Jan '19

I need to write a script that runs several tasks against a remote server via SSH & rsync. To be keep it simple, imagine just an rsync followed by a command via SSH. I don't want this to be passwordless - I want the script to require the remote password before it runs. But I don't want to have to enter it again until the script ends. Is there a good way to do this? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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