Public Domain, Free Culture and Open Source Apps

Why don’t we have better screensavers. Raspbian has NO screensaver.

xscreensaver

The drama behind xscreensaver was so amusing to me, I want to me Jaime.

What I learned from jmz

jmz is the awesome. I mean wtf. Because of his code/error messages, I realized the following:

1. no bc in Raspbian

2. Debian is bug driven and won’t update packages without bugs even if there is a more current version.

3. Jaime is a fucking rock star!

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop-shipping-xscreensaver/

The whole wayland thing has me concerned about the state of my own software, respin.

That’s just extraneous software – easily done by rsync or …meh dd.

xscreensaver saves the day

However, I was informed by an evangelist who does hackathons that at one point an image locked up and there was no way to get past the screen lock. Installing xscreensaver then disabling lock did the trick. I’m sure there are more refined ways of doing things, but being able to hack past a problem using xscreensaver was … delicious.

Fuck Debian.

It still isn’t in stable. Years later. I did compile the newer version from source. For some reason there were C++ comments… just 2 that held up my compile. – No worries if you run into an error, that was the only error.

So, solid code.
But lets talk about images now.

We can customize … use free culture or public domain images. Let’s do this thing!

They are getting worse and worse. I continue to speculate that Ian died on the cusp of leaving Linux Foundation.

OT

P.S. Linux foundation fired all writers last month. Roy was the only one who noticed and wrote about it.

 

June 2015 – Pi fun at gangplank! Banana “berry”

We had a really good turn out and learned a lot of great stuff.

Here are some things we worked on:

  • Got Android running on Banana Pi.
  • Installed Berry boot and loaded – puppy, retro pi, debian
  • Demonstrated Xbian

berryboot

Presentation by adrenaline – Automate your redbox top 25 list and email the results to yourself

or cron and postfix your way to entertainment.

Tina and the Coffee Can Antenna

So, last night, Tina came to visit. I wanted to show her the pi. She was having fun. I always thought maybe the boys would be more interested. Turns out she was!

She started asking all kinds of questions. I was amazed. Not amazed that she was interested. Who wouldn’t be interested in the Pi! I was amazed at how she wanted to know the specs, how it worked, etc. The boys didn’t really care as much.

It’s a girl’s toy in this house! :)

tina
Tina and her brother – 5 years ago.

So, Tina and I were talking. She does have an AA with Linux Certificate. She was always good at Linux. Then, we sat around the table and she told us the tale of her digital antenna. Coffee can, Nail, Coax and electrical tape. She told us the nail was too long but worked. Then, I realized, she sent her husband to go get that nail from Home Depot. That is why it was the wrong size. She is amazing. I encouraged her to go into Electronic or Electrical Engineering at the college. Then Zack, asked her about math. So, Zack took Calc 1 in high school. Tina was never interested in math. She could do it if she wanted. She was always kick ass in Science and Math. English… not so much.

I was thinking one of the boys would do some Pi stuff with me. I’m going to get Tina one when I get a chance. I hope she will do something with it. Not sure. Maybe I’ll start her with a cheap Raspberry.