Techblog on ulno.net

Changing your case to solve battery drain and overheating on the Google Nexus 6P Phone

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

My daily driver phone at the moment is a Google Nexus 6P. It is the last of Google’s true Nexus phones, so it is especially nice if you want to do some Android development and have more recent ROMs and access to new Android features. It is also a really nice option if you want to have very affordable worldwide cell and data coverage with Google’s Project FI which requires you to have a new Nexus Phone or the its successor, the Google Pixel. The difference to the Pixel does not seem so big, however, the 6P has a major downside: it runs a Snapdragon 810 which (under load) overheats even more than other cell phone processors.

Reviving GULEEK i8 with broken Display with Headless Magic and Arch Linux

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

In February 2016, one of my Maker friends in Jakarta, Indonesia pointed me to an offer of an all-in-one PC too hard to pass up. It was a GULEEK i8 with Intel Quadcore Atom processor (Baytrail), 2 GB Ram, 16Gb ssd, built-in battery, 2 USB 2.0 Ports, micro sd-card reader, Windows 8.1 pre-installed. The whole package sold for incredibly low $70 a piece.

Nice but Powerful Command Line Editors as Alternatives to Vi and Emacs

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

Lots of Linux beginners face at one point or the other the problem that they have to change a small configuration inside the command line. There is no Notepad, IntelliJ, Eclipse, and not even Gedit or Kate available here.

Taming Chrome - Control tabs memory and free space for your work

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

Ever seen what a beast Google Chrome has become? I started monitoring that it easily took 2-3GB of my main memory sometimes and was really bogging my system down. Running Android Studio or Pycharm need quite some memory too and things got actually killed by the system once in a while, making me yet again re-consider Firefox.

Smart Home Project Update Started

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

I have committed to investing more time into my home automation and smart home activities.

As a first step I have updated the corresponding pages here on the site. Check out:

Issues installing isso as replacement for disqus and how to solve them

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

Due to extreme trouble with disqus (compare previous posts), I switched my discussion and commenting system to isso.

My server runs at this point Ubuntu 16.04 and therefore you can either use the available isso package (just do apt install isso) or install a newer package from an external source as described here.

New Youtube-video on blog/twitter/ifttt automation

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

Here is my video on showing how to automatically post a new blog entry to Twitter with IFTTT.

9yKdqdNUOLI

Twitter IFTTT Video Test

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

This is just a little test to automatically tweet what I write on my blog.And now the spelling is fixed too. Stay tuned and watch out for the corresponding youtube video.

Disqus only working for old posts, switch to isso

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

This is testing the disqus comments, this file was just copied and not generated from a working disqus post. There is something extremely strange happening as comments on my older posts work but not on new posts. It just tells me that it would not load and points me to their installation tutorial with very little documentation and debug options.

Article on my work on linkedin

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Here is a nice article on linkedin by Kathy Stershic on my work in IoT security and home autmation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maker-craft-alternative-more-secure-approach-internet-kathy-stershic

Maker Faire 2017 and eHome news

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0100

I have been busy bulding a new ehome demonstrator. It’s not from lego like the LegoEHomeDemonstrator it’s again from wood like eHomeDemosntrator v1. It’s a little smaller and has lots of wireless devices based on the Wemos D1 Mini running Micorpython.

Article on disrupted communities, Making and IoT

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Chris Bennett and I just [published an article on linkedin on disrupted communitiesm the Internet of Things, and Making. Check it out: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/disrupted-communities-unique-view-how-people-making-things-bennett

Midnight Commander in Ubuntu - not opening zip and jar files

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0200

Just a really weird dicovery:

I was recently getting problems opening zip (and jar) archives on Midnight Commander (on my Xubuntu 15.04 Desktop). I repacked soem jars and some opened but most didn’t. Today I was dicovering that also zip-archives were not browsable anymore. Then I stumblen upon this post: https://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/2623 (created 4 years ago). It basically tells you to check /usr/lib/mc/extfs.d/uzip and change

Re-Installing Samsung Note 3 (N9005) for encryption and NFC unlock

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0200

What an installation hell (2 days wasted)…

Being constantly exposed to all potential features of Mobile Phones, I wanted to have several things going on at the same time:

Full encryption of the phone with long password entered usually only at boot time
Using an NFC ring usually to unlock the phone (I was hoping to use Smart Lock for it.)
Being able to run Unity and Vuforia-based projects from my student (this actually lead to having to use maximum Kitkat)
Being able to use k9 (also serious display issues in Lollipop)
Root access

Summing it up, it was extremely hard. The only solution I could get working, was getting a stock ROM for the Samsung phone from some shady download site, using Odin 3.09 to flash the respective Rom, encrypting the phone (I think it maters to do this first), using chainfire to re-root it, and then installign Xposed and there NFC Screen unlock.

Gitolite and Nikola, auto deploy

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0200

I am trying to test here, if the autodeploying with git and Nikola works. If it does, I will explain how it works. It seems like GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE play a big role like described here. Basically you should use a solution like this here.

Wordpress to Nikola

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0200

Long time no blogging - and no, this is not an april-fool’s joke. I just spent some time moving over from wordpress to a static blog. I wasn’t able to upgrade to Wordpress 5 (it broke my site), so I was looking for updates. As I like python, Nikola (http://getnikola.com) fit my bill. Still, I want to go all static and have therefore disabled comments. If you like a post and want your opinion visible, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note at the email listed at contact mentioning the post you refer to and I will include your opinion here.

Meeting 2nd of April

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Kamila & Asset

NAS is being repaired

TODO

automatic mounting iSCSI

Yana

Finished GUI

Georgiy

Research further parsing of Nvidia network through PCI

Yerkanat

Installing OpenStack

Temirlan

Hadoop Map reducers scripts

Alexandra

Developing Android Application 7

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Weekly Review:

Finally I finished with accelerometer. This time I changed my method of dealing with that question. Instead of counting distance moved, I preferred to count step or changes in accelerometer, So, I used accelerometer data to find general linear acceleration and if it was greater 0.48(probably value required to make a step). Then I added located the orientation by orientation sensor and moved towards right angle. This time, I considered that I would move in labyrinth(only one direction move) and collected data of changing angle in degrees by orientation sensor and combined it accelerometer values. Later I drew background by matrices of true(wall) and false(empty space) and by using maze located my target on initial position, If I can move to the preferred direction, sensor data’s will change my position in map matrices and redraw it. I located initial position(where we can move) of each map by saving index by preferences table. Also, I added background music. I uploaded my initial movement project (Direct) in DropBox

Developing Android Application 6

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Weekly Review:

Changed formula for acceleration. Now I have instead three different acceleration one linear acceleration.

lin_accel = Math.sqrt(accel_x^2+accel_y^2+accel_z^2) - earth gravity

Now by this data I can move only forward or backward. I want to use data from gyroscope and detect angle of rotation. Despite I added low pass filter, accelerometer data is quite unpredictable and my object instead of moving to one side, jumps from side to side. So, I stopped here trying to find solution. I need complex mathematical formula. Found similar project in research centre in Spain(here is their website http://roodin.crs4.it/). Look to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTZFRDBdQck&feature=related. I asked them to guide me. Hopefully after finishing this part I will work on combination maps and my code.

Weekly meeting 26.06.2013

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Kamila: managed to setup up owncloud backup. It backs up only what has been changed. Authentication and security(SSL) issues. Future work: Setting up remote access to owncloud. Setting up owncloud on the server with backup and LDAP.

'Android Developers '

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Report:

During week 1 the majority of work was dedicated to cover as much material as I could. There were

creating pop-up messages
creating menu function

context menu

writing LayoutParameters in MainActivity.java file
simple animation with text

Our project:

Awesome bike!

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Thanks to the warm weather I am starting to love my bicycle again. However, how awesome are these (discoverd on gizmodo):

Maybe even my parents in law would approve of this one:

Cloning or backing up a system with rsync

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I have used rsync as the tool of my choice for a long time to often clone my system or make a backup, which I can still boot from. Feel free to use this code for your own projects. I would enjoy an attribution and a comment here or an email if you use it, but I will put this into the public domain.

Small ssh introduction

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Some of my students, family, or friends still fear the black box with white charecters, sometimes called the shell, the command line, or the terminal. However, if you have embraced the concept and the opportunity of what you can achieve with just some simple commands typed into a box, I will give you here a small manual how to even use this power remotely. The magic command is ssh, the secure shell. Linux and MacOSX usually offer this feature by default (sometimes you have to install openssh-server), however, even windows can easily offer this using cygwin. In debian or ubuntu like system you want to issue sudo apt-get install openssh-server to install the server (to make it possible to display the command line from a different computer). A client on MacOSX and Linux systems you just type ssh into a command line, fo rwindows you either want cygwin or putty.

t-mobile US in Linux with wvdial and HUAWEI USB Modem

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Just got my day-pass option with t-mobile under Linux and my HUAWEI USB-Stick HDSPA-Modem (lists as Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem / E230/E270 HSDPA/HSUPA Modem in lsusb) running. Now I pay $2 per day, if I need Internet on that day (only 2G speed - I measured, I got something around 9-16Kbytes per second - enough to even use Skype). For $3 a day you get even 200MB on 4G speed. Nice is that the connection is apart from the speed not capped. Pretty good prepaid optionin the US. I got a second SIM-card for this purpose (didn’t want to lose my gold status on my “normal” prepaid card).

Broken mime types or program associations in XFCE4.8

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Just recently I had lots of weird things happening on my desktop. The Places-addon of Xfce4 was for example opening always my mp3-player qmmp, when I clicked on a folder. Interesting default?! Also when opening pdf and epub-files always calibre was the default.

Sound in Linux (and pulseaudio) – finally works with rt-kernel?

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Just wanted to share an interesting observation. I had quite some trouble with some programs in Linux playing sound (most programs like vnc working nicely), mainly with kvm but also musescore - it was allways stuttering. For fun I just installed the 3.0.0-2-rt-amd64 kernel and hey, the stuttering is gone!

Howto install non-debian python packages in debian

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

I have messed up my python system under debian quite often. Today I had to install rpyc for a project – no luck, no debian package.

So, How can I install non-existent python packages in debian in a clean way?

Distorted sound and beeps in Flashplayer under 64-bit Linux

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Some Videos, I was watching in flashplayer under Linux behaved a little weird and had distorted sound with some beeping. Basically the sound was understandable but heavily distorted. An Internet search revealed that it has todo with some obsoleted use of memcpy in flashplayer.

Jitsi - finally a cross platform Skype alternative

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Due to Skype’s ever lasting bad Linux support and various crashes, I started to look for an alternative. I do give Skype credit, they try to take a lot of effort from the user to get things running. I toyed a bit around with jingle from jabber, but with not much success, neither Pidgin nor Empathy get the communication over Jingle right. However, I was pretty often (sadly not always - but I have to admit there were some pretty tough firewalls, I tried it with) successful with Jitsi. Yes, I should have tried this earlier as I was google-mentor for sip-communicator, Jitsi’s predecessor, several times. Ok, Jitsi, I am back as one of your loyal supporters.

LEGO Antikythera -- Another step to LEGO World Domination

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Not much recently on my Blog - yep I know, it’s summer!

Here just discovered for you some ultimate toy built in LEGO. Now it would be great, if you could buy this prepackaged in a box.

book writing -- 201 pages -- reason to celebrate

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Yep, it’s done, we made the 200! We were busy writing and drawing a lot. Now we made it already pretty far. This is a a reason to celebrate a bit with a glass of Viru Valge. Terviseks!

book writing - story driven modeling - 167 pages

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Back to seclusion and book writing mode – that’s why you don’t see me online these days. We are performing well, have hit 167 pages yesterday. The content production becomes harder, but we are still confident to get something ready this time, which we can present to a potential publisher.

Solved digikam crashing

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0200

My digikam program stopped working on my Debian desktop and finally I found out why. I always got the following error message:

QSqlDatabasePrivate removeDatabase connection ConnectionTest is still in use all queries will cease to work

A geek-child's dream -- a LEGO sorter

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Another amazing outcome of human creativity – how would I have loved this a child – of course, it would have had to be even bigger with plenty more buckets.

MoMo St. Petersburg -- recap

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200

I am home again and am heading soon to Germany. MoMo-Estonia already released their summary of the event at http://www.momoestonia.com/2011/03/summary-estonian-entrepreneurs-in-st.html and therefore beat me to mine. However, I will still share here my own personal view of the event with you. Just for a short summary, it was a great event with plenty of networking and interesting presentations. I would have wished having more student and academic contacts, but probably I should have done more local advertising in advance. However, I got valuable contacts and look forward to following up with them.

'MoMo: Slides uploaded'

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Just uploaded my slides for the talk today to http://momo.ulno.net (under resources) or download them directly from http://ulno.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/momo-st-petersburg.pdf.

Twitter Tools test

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Now I have activated Twitter Tools. Now I should get my posts on Facebook and twitter. testing

Eclipse to ADT on 64bit

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Just something, I would like to write down her, because it cost me a lot of time to figure out. I couldn’t talk to the Android simulator in eclipse after upgrading my system. I had to change in /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf the variable net.ipv6.bindv6only from 1 to 0. This seems also to concern other networking problems in Java - not so sure if it is at all 64 bit related, but it happened with this update.

Hardware virtualization on Sony Vaio P

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

On my way to getting Android running on the Sony Vaio P, I thought I would first try to get Android running in a virtual machine. I was going to try kvm and virtualbox. To make sure to run with maximum speed, I wanted to switch on hardware virtualization as I found out that the built in Atom processor should actually be capable of it. Sadly I found out that Sony disabled this feature in the Bios and didn’t expose any setting in the Bios to switch it on - what an odd choice (reminds me that I should write a huge rant about Sony concerning taking away the linux support for my Playsations, I am running here for interested students in the office).

First success compiling android x86

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

I have a small Sony Vaio P, which is very pretty but seeks for new tasks in my humble home. So in terms of diving deeper into Android, I started taking a closer look at the Android X86 project. I tried to run the image in virtualbox and qemu/kvm.

Load-Balancers

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

I was today taking a look into several load-balancers for a project of a colleague. I was especially interested in simple http load-balancers which would be easy to hack or easily remotely controllable. After searching freshmeat and for simple load-balancers in java and python in google. I turned up the following:

Simple Python Webserver

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

While toying around with load-balancers I also re-discovered at the same time how easy it is to serve a directory in a local webserver on a specific port in python. Just change to the directory and type:

wolframalpha

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

I just figured out wolframalpha which is a very nice search site for technical stuff. http://www.wolframalpha.com/ Uli helped me in rediscovering it again.