We started producing shows as Today with a Techie on 2005-09-19, 19 years, 1 months, 19 days ago. Our shows are produced by listeners like you and can be on any topics that "are of interest to hackers". If you listen to HPR then please consider contributing one show a year. If you record your show now it could be released in 5 days.
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Duration: 00:08:15
Today I will talk about digitizing analog photos. I will talk about two methods.
I have scanners from different manufacturers, flat bed scanner and dedicated film scanner. Each scanner is delivered with software. Each software is generally good. But it is a problem to manage several software. Secondly, none of them works for Linux operating system. I wanted to simplify my software learning, so I wanted one software for all my existing and any future scanner. Secondly I intended to migrate to a Linux operating system, which I now have done.
Those two requirements lead me to switch over to VueScan software. I had tested VueScan before and also gotten recommendations from photographic friends. VueScan is a proprietary software made by a small family run company. It’s available for Linux, Windows and macOS. VueScan supports very many hardware scanners. I do not know about any better software for Linux and is maybe also the best choice for any operating system. I do not regret my switch to VueScan.
A second method to digitize photos is reproduction with a camera. That is to use a camera to shoot a photo of the photo.
Some say it is the superior technology. I don’t know. But as I am coming from the scanning technology and starting to explore the repro technology, I will give my early thoughts from that perspective.
My initial plan has been to use repro photography for prints that are glued into albums and therefore difficult to manage in the scanner. It is also an excellent method to digitize other papers in book format. But I have not really started to do that.
However, a while ago I started to look into 6x9 cm negatives. My scanner can just manage 6x9. But I do not have a fixture for 6x9. So it is both somewhat tricky to position the negative as well as to keep it flat. A thin plexiglass plate might be possible to use to keep it flat. Even without plexiglass, I have tested I can get well acceptable result with the scanner.
I started to try out the repro method. I have not come so far in my trials that I can decide which is the best method for me.
My camera is a modest camera compared to state of the art. My flat bed scanner should give better or comparable resolution than my modest digital camera. The fixture I have for repro do not keep the negative fully flat, because 6x9 is a rather big size. So I plan to explore if I can improve quality with a plexiglass plate above the negative.
An issue with the repro method is to keep all angles in control, to mount the camera in exactly correct angle in relation to the object. Focus can also be another issue. I consider it is better to use manual focus rather than auto focus. When I take the repro photos, I have the camera connected to a laptop and I use the Entangle software to control the camera settings. I can use the camera live view to position the object as well as to focus.
I use RawTherapee software to convert the negative photo to a normal photo. RawTherapee comes with pre-installed profiles for this process. The default profile values can be adjusted and also stored as new personal profiles.
A major advantage of the repro method compared to the scanner method is the speed. Once all is configured, it takes one hundred of a second or so to do the digitize itself, while it can take minutes with the scanner.
I use digiKam as my photo catalog software.
All software I currently use with the exception of VueScan are free and open source. I use all on Linux operating system, some of them are available on other platforms. I include links to their websites in the show notes.
If you have any opinion or experience on digitizing analog photos, I will be happy to read your comments or listen to your show.
VueScan: https://www.hamrick.com/
Entangle: https://entangle-photo.org/
RawTherapee: https://rawtherapee.com/
digiKam: https://www.digikam.org/
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Duration: 00:15:24
Ken suggested at Oggcamp to do a long term product review of my hand warmer.
The model: OCOOPA 10,000 mAh capacity
Purchase date: December 2020
Cost: £25
Description: It has a single button used to turn it on and to adjust the heat level.
It has three different USB sockets. These are used when either charging the hand warmer or using it as a power bank to charge other devices.
Amazon seem to sell the model I have and amazingly it’s still £25!
During OggCamp I mentioned to Ken that I had an electric hand warmer and he asked me if it was any good. He suggested I do a long term product review of it. So here is my review
I do lots of dog walking and suffer from cold hands.
I've had different hand warmers over the years:
This electric hand warmer is by far the best solution I've found.
It saved me twice during OggCamp as I used it on two occasions to top up my phone. When arriving and leaving OggCamp.
This was the first time I’d used the hand warmer to charge anything. I was very glad it worked.
At the time of purchase I was rather sceptical about the whole idea of electric hand warmers.
The batteries are not used in ideal conditions. They get very hot and when in use a lot of current is drawn from them.
My Hand warmer is now almost 4 years old and is still going strong with no noticeable degradation in capacity.
It has a rated capacity is 10,000 mAh. The highest charge it achieved was about 1 year into use. It accepted 8034 mAh of charge. I haven’t checked again since November 2021. However it still continues to last many hours / multiple dog walks.
I always get a bit nervous over the summer months as it is left for a number of months unused. Luckily living in Scotland I don’t need to wait long until the weather gets cold. Did I mention before about the horrible weather in Scotland?
Always wait for the battery to return to room temperature before putting it on charge.
Don’t leave the hand warmer for more than a few days at 100% charge.
Try not to completely flatten the battery. If you do flatten the battery then charge it up soon afterwards.
If storing it for a number of months then try to store it at approximately 50% charge.
Top view
Underneath
USB ports
Hosted by Ken Fallon on Tuesday, 2024-11-05 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
OggCamp2024, STF, Mental Health.
Interviews.
(Be the first).
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Duration: 00:10:58
Hosted by HPR Volunteers on Monday, 2024-11-04 is flagged as Explicit and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Community News.
HPR Community News.
1.
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Duration: 01:35:30
There were no new hosts this month.
These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows. There are 25 comments in total.
There are 8 comments on 4 previous shows:
There are 17 comments on 10 of this month's shows:
Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mail List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman.
The threaded discussions this month can be found here:
https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2024-October/thread.htmlWith the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar.
Quoting the site:
This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page.
There has been a lot of activity this month on the Gitea repos
with rho`n catching up on outstanding bugs. We also had a
lot of changes due to the ongoing Internet Archive outage that is still
impacting us. A quick fix was to host the 10 day feed directly from the
HPR server, but since then we have made all the media available on the
HPR Community Content Delivery Network.
We will have three sources but if you meet the requirements for hosting, and wish to help out please get in touch.
We added a html link to the comments page to provide direct feedback from any app that supports it. Eg: gPodder opens Firefox at the comment form.
We have consolidated a lot of repositories on Gitea, removing some and moving others. https://repo.anhonesthost.net/HPR
Documentation is now available and includes:
I am planning to "retire" from the Hacker Public Radio Janitorial Team. I have been helping to administer HPR for over 12 years now. I first offered help to Ken in 2012 in response to an appeal he made. We met at OggCamp in that year, and I joined the Community News recording for episode 1066 in September 2012. My first show was 1091 in October that year.
I will turn 75 in December 2024, and am finding that I don't have the energy to do as much as I could when I first joined. I also want to be able to devote more time to the various personal projects I have.
I plan to consolidate all my scripts on the HPR Gitea repositories, and document all the processes I have been looking after. I want to have completed the handover by the end of March 2025.
I will continue as an HPR host for as long as I can after that.
I have had a wonderful 12 years as an HPR Janitor and will always look back on it with great pleasure.
Hosted by Ahuka on Friday, 2024-11-01 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Science fiction, Doctor Who, William Hartnell.
Science Fiction and Fantasy.
2.
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Duration: 00:15:21
This is a look at the rest of the first season of Doctor Who. We look at the problems of producing weekly show on a year-round schedule, and then give a brief description of each of the stories.
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Duration: 00:15:03
Anything "tasker" in https://rmccurdy.com/.scripts/downloaded/ complete dump of all of the Tasker scripts!!!
Hosted by Some Guy On The Internet on Wednesday, 2024-10-30 is flagged as Explicit and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
snaps, SnapPackages, FlatPak.
general.
3.
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Duration: 00:15:16
Snaps are just better.
72 hours or I'm 100% correct.
Get your snaps here
https://snapcraft.io/
Hosted by Kevie on Tuesday, 2024-10-29 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Manchester, OggCamp, Conference.
OggCamp.
1.
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Duration: 00:22:24
Having recently attended OggCamp 2024 in Manchester. Kevie shares some of his thoughts on the event and on the whole experience in general.
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Duration: 00:09:49
Join Alexander [Lochyboy] as he gives information about the history of Nintendo
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Duration: 00:07:56
Today I'm going to go into more detail about what I mean when I say Plain Text Program. I want to emphasize that this is just me. Others may have different ideas on this topic. This is how I try to write Plain Text Programs. I will feature other people's work that I still consider to be Plain Text Programs that do not follow all of these guidelines.
I want to thank the hosts on the monthly HPR Community News podcast for inspiring me. They had questions. I also want to thank those making comments. I'm new to Hacker Public Radio and I will try to be more timely responding to comments in the future.
Text files are usually edited in a text editor or in a word processor
and saved with the .txt extension. They consist of a string of
characters. Text files can be divided into lines using the newline
character, \n, or the carriage return and newline
characters, \r\n. You don't have to type these characters.
Your editor puts them in for you.
Text files do not have to use the .txt extension. Most programming files, like .php or .c files are plain text. I will only be discussing programs that are open source and that store their code in text files.
Plain text configuration files often have no extension. For my Plain
Text Programs I use config.inc.
There is no difference between text files and plain text files. People often say plain text files to distinguish them from word processor files like .doc or .odt files.
Plain Text Programs use text files to store text like a title or a blog post. When I talk about Plain Text Programs I also mean something more than this. That's what this podcast is about.
Plain Text Programs do not use a database like mysql or postgres. Also the file system does not imitate a database, creating keys, indexing, etc.
Instead the file system performs the database functions by accessing files which can be text files, graphics files, or other files. These files can be all in one directory or in multiple directories in a single directory tree.
If password security is required in a Plain Text Program that runs on the internet I make an exception to the single tree rule to allow passwords to be stored outside of the webspace.
So the assets a Plain Text Program accesses are just files in the file system.
I have no rule against allowing html or other markup. But I do not assume that the maintainer knows how to do this or wants to learn it. The reason I started writing Plain Text Programs was to avoid html markup. I want to be able to type text files, save them, and upload them, without being concerned about anything except the text itself.
The text files holding the content are written in block paragraph style with a blank line between paragraphs. Text files are not required in a Plain Text Program but most Plain Text Programs do use some text data which should be stored in text files.
If this is a web application, links can be copied and pasted from the browser with no additional markup required.
Other assets in the directory, like .gif, .jpg, or .png images, display automatically.
I use the file names for meta data like title, caption, or sort order. I can also sort chronologically using the file timestamps.
If there is a hierarchy of directories the program can use the directory name of the child directories for the link text. For instance the Delta Musicians directory tree can have a Table Of Contents at the top level that lists the musicians in alphabetical order. Each musician gets their own subdirectory and the name of that subdirectory is used to generate the link and link text for that page.
Then, each page can use Dirt Simple Photo Gallery and the program generates the caption from the image's file name.
All configuration is also done in a text file. I use a well
documented config.inc file that initializes php variables.
The maintainer of the application is never required to edit source
code.
No. I write mostly web apps so they run in the browser interface. Also, Plain Text Programs do not require a GUI. It could run in a terminal or as a cron job. The program could play a music playlist or run a slideshow with no input at all.
The maintainer of the program will have to be able to 1. Create and edit text files in a text editor or word processor 2. Copy and paste links, iframe embeds, file names, titles, etc. 3. Rename files 4. Upload and download with ftp
A Plain Text Program does not use a database like sql. Instead it stores the assets in the file system and accesses them using the file system.
A Plain Text Program does not require html or other markup. Text assets are written in block paragraph format. If the maintainer prefers to use a word processor instead of a text editor that's fine as long as the files are saved as text files with the .txt extension. Most word processors support this.
Plain Text Programs can support links if the links are copied and pasted into the text file with no markup required.
Plain Text Programs can support iframe embeds if the embed code is copied and pasted onto its own line in the text file.
All of the assets for a Plain Text Program are stored in a single directory tree. This is one of the main advantages of Plain Text Programs because it makes them easy to backup and restore so they are very portable. I sometimes make an exception to this if I want to save a password on a webserver outside of the webspace.
A Plain Text Program uses the file and directory names for meta data like titles, captions, or sort order. The file timestamps can be used for chronological sorting.
All configuration is done by editing a well documented text file. The maintainer should not have to edit the program code.
The maintainer should be allowed to edit the program code. I will only discuss open source programs that store the program itself in text files.
I thought so. Comment on Hacker Public Radio or at Gamer+DBN. I will include links in the show notes.
Interviews from Day two of OggCamp 2024 from Manchester
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Interviews from Day one of OggCamp 2024 from Manchester
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Part 6 is the final episode it deals with fitting the new replacement PLL backup battery.
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Claudio describes his process for mass USB flash drive duplication with FreeBSD, tmux, and dd.
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We continue our look at the mechanics of this game
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Lee talks to Matthew about the link between neurodiversity and hacking.
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I detail a technique to ensure all music used on my Youtube channel is free from copyright claims
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More filters
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SOC Fortress CoPilot / Velociraptor / Wazuh and Taco Bell Quesadilla Sauce!
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Kristoff Bonne ON1ARF and Ken Fallon PA7KEN chat about HAM and Hackers
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Archer72 rambles about an experience in a Wal-Mart oil change shop
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Sgoti butchers a movie review of The Artifice Girl
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Part 5 deals with the removal of the original 40 year old PLL backup battery.
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HPR Volunteers talk about shows released and comments posted in September 2024
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A look at the very first serial of Doctor Who
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Sgoti talks about using his head lamp and backpack during his day job
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Got the wrong batteries and had to walk to get the right ones
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Dirt Simple Photo Gallery put me on the path to Plain Text Programs
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Sgoti talks about Good Samaritan laws. Good Heavens!
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About setting up a rack mounted home lab
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The Hallway track from Spectrum24 day 2
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The Hallway track from Spectrum24 day 1
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Part 4 deals with getting access to the PLL backup battery.
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Neuro diverse TV/Movies, DIY Liquid Conductive paint, cold hands / feet, Linux CPU info apps
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We start our dive into the mechanics of this game
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The HPR community comes together to converse
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Plain Text Programs-what they are-what they do-why they're good-and why they're not for everything
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A response to hpr1949, about the KOReader
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Sgoti talks about resources for new Linux users.
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Trollercoaster interacts with the Community News Summary of August 2024
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