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T-o-T - phone battery
by Christopher Dawkins 16 Jun '19

16 Jun '19

> Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2019 16:17:36 +0100 > From: Ted Harding <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> > Subject: [ALUG] T-O-T! > > This is to do with what happens when the time comes (if it comes) to > replace the battery of a mobile phone. > > The discharge/recharge cycle with rechargeable batteries leads in the end > (but slowly) to loss of rechargeability, > at which point the battery needs to be replaced. > > I basically have a couple of questions: > > 1: If say 40-80% of the capacity is used each day, with full recharging at > the end of each day (phone switched off at night), > how long is the battery likely to last until it needs replacement? > Varies widely. I find most modern batteries last a lot longer than they used to, and I can keep phones for four years or more. Though since I have been buying Chinese ones from geekbuying.com I can afford a new one every three years. My Elephone 8000 had the problem of compulsory diagnostics in Chinese, where I had to guess by bitter experience which symbol meant 'OK' and which meant 'try again', the worst problem being the 'make emergency call' function on which I had to give a fast apology. But then I got a Xiaomi A1 M1 with 'World' ROM, which is all in English and doing very well indeed. I did get a new second battery for my Samsung 3 many years ago, and within a few years found both old and new batteries equally good (both Samsung 3 and Elephone are still in action). The nice thing about Chinese phones is that they all take two SIM cards, very useful when travelling and inded also in the UK when in bad reception areas, so long as they are completely different. > 2: During replacement, the phone is presumably totally without power for a short period of time. Can this lead > to information stored on the phone being lost? > Never been a problem for me. > Specifically, my phone is a fairly basic mobile, a DORO 6520. (And it has > so far > been running happily for about 2 years). > Goole it. New batteries seem to be available for under £20. (Though googling DORO 6520 battery returns at first hit an amazingly useless official 7-item help page) -- Christopher Dawkins, Archivist, Felsted school Garnetts Corner, Jollyboys Lane North, Felsted, Dynmow, Essex CM6 3DU 07816 821659

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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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