Thanks to notebookcheck.net, I've scored a Fujitsu Futro S730 passively cooled mini PC (technically, it's a thin client) with an AMD GX-217GA processor, 4GB RAM and an 8GB mSATA SSD. All of that for a princely sum of €14.03 — with free DHL shipping included. And that was not even the cheapest model in the store I bought it from.
Continue readingI've never had thought that the most tough test of my German would be... a vision test. I had to do it before ordering new glasses, and, boy, that turned out to be quite an ordeal! The guy in charge of the test was a fast talker (like a really, really fast talker), and he was like, Now focus on the third letter in the second row with your right eye, and tell me which option is better: 1 or 2. OK, now look at the cluster of points, and tell me which one looks better. Great! Let's do the same for the other eye.
Believe it or not, the test ended up with him asking me to read a longish text from a card.1 I was totally stressed, and I was sweating profusely, but I did manage to muddle through the entire thing. So now German language-wise, I fear nothing, N-O-T-H-I-N-G! And as a reward for my tribulations, I'll have new glasses in 5 to 10 days.
[1] I'm pretty sure that reading out loud wasn't part of the test — the guy was just having fun at my expense.
Here's a neat little trick that makes it easier to find a specific command in the Bash history. Add the following alias to the .bashrc file:
alias hist='history | grep --color=auto'
Say, you want to find a previously used rsync command. In the terminal, run hist rsync, and you should see a list of all matching commands saved in the .bash_history file. To run the desired command, use !000, where 000 is the command's number.
Little Backup Box has been by far my most successful and popular project. But about two years ago, I chose to transfer it to a new maintainer, effectively abandoning the project. The other day, it occurred to me that I had never said a proper good-bye to my project. So here it goes.
As it often happens, I started working on the project to solve a problem I had: I didn't want to schlep around a laptop when traveling, but I wanted to have a backup solution to keep my photos safe. As Raspberry Pi had been making waves as a versatile platform for all kinds of projects, I thought I'd try to build a Raspberry Pi-based backup appliance that would replace a proper laptop. And over the years, various Raspberry Pi models running Little Backup Box served me well during my travels.
Continue readingTaste in music is like underwear: everybody has their personal preferences, nobody really wants to know what they are.