All posts by Ben

Absence of Prescence

I haven’t bothered posting or checking anything here lately, but nothing (much) has been going on. School starts soon, sadly. The school in which I attend is trying to incorporate technology more. Now a rant about keyboards. THE SLASH KEY SHOULDN’T BE NEAR THE BACKSPACE. Now something not in caps. (OOPS I LIED.) I am typing this on a silicone keyboard that can be rolled up and is completely sealed. (So it can be washed.) Now back on topic. Today I got two new keyboards. This one, and another one that i miniature and has a track pad on it. These are for my raspberry pi. This is the final piece in my own device to be used for school. Quite random this has been. Goodbye.

Edit: forgot to mention the key dedicated to waking your computer up. It’s labeled ‘Wake Up’.

Comb

We just went outside and checked on the bees. They have built quite a bit of comb on 3-4 of the bars. Normally I would post a picture of them now, but I don’t have one at the moment.

Warm Seat

Hello, all. Recently (more like a month or so) ago I built a case for my Raspberry Pi out of legos. It has worked pretty well, although it isn’t the prettiest case. Also my science fair project (I really need to get popups working again) placed 4th in the category (Had to do that, my sister is trying to do “cat flexing,” more like torturing the cats) that it was in, Physics and Astronomy, the largest category.

I also would like someone to explain to me something: my sister claims that the middle seat on a Ford pickup is warmer because it is smaller, but it is literally the same seat (basically it is a bench seat) so I don’t understand how it is possible. Please comment if you know why this is (and keep in mind it might not actually even be true.)

Photo of old Ford seat

Arduino

Hello! Arduino boards are quite useful for many things, including gathering data for science fair projects. I am currently “working” on one, about half way done with the board (The less time consuming half) and will likely be up for a while longer taping stuff to my board. I have used them (now twice) for science fair projects, and the prove quite useful, because I get a constant stream of data from them into the Serial Monitor. Bye!

Owncloud

Last article I wrote about my Pi and the web server that I had running on it. Well, in the past few days I have completely changed it. So, now it is running Nginx (Supposedly slower than Pancake, but Pancake doesn’t yet have support for secure http (https://mysite)) with an Owncloud installation on it. Only thing, it helps to have the server’s address in the Common Name of your certificate, otherwise the browser says the site isn’t secure (Or implies it.) The hard part was getting Owncloud to use a USB flash drive. The way I finally made it work was a symbolic link from /var/www/owncloud/owncloud_data from /home/pi/owncloud_data (But mounted the USB drive to /home/pi/owancloud_data.) The only problem is that owncloud wants to a) Be the only user that can access it (chmod 0770 /var/www/owncloud/owncloud_data) and to b) have access to the data directory (chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/owncloud_data) but none of this really works at first (Unless your drive is formatted as Ext3 already.) So, I looked up a tutorial on formatting a drive as Ext3, and it worked immediately.

Continue reading Owncloud

Raspberry Pi

Hello. For Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi! I have enjoyed it (But it is a bit slow.) I just go finished installing a web server (Pancake) on it. The Pi is quite interesting and fun to play with. The only problem is slightly limited memory storage space (4 GB on the SD card I am using,) but using a bigger one would help. Also, only install the packages you need (Git is 11Mb (including dependencies) and filled up the whole SD card.) Happy holidays!

Dwarf Fortress

Hello.. First, since last post about ham, I have gotten 91 ham comments.. (Yes, I am refraining from using the name of your very favorite meat in a can)

I have started playing Dwarf Fortress (Free).  I have enjoyed it (Since I figured out how to make stairs… But that’s another story.) The graphics (ASCII, but I have used a tileset (A custom font made specially for the purpose) most of the time) are interesting, especially the ASCII movies. So far, I have been successful (Except for the stairs (And is there a way to remove downward stairs?)) I have only lost one dwarf (Not my fault, the stairs.)

No Coupon Codes!

Hello everybody! I just went through the comments that I have in moderation, and most of them are like

check this link, prada outlet suprisely BpKgxqqQ http://www.*****.com/

Yes, you may think I want free coupon codes, but no, they do get marked as spam, so instead, contact me.
EDIT: Since posting, I have received 24 comments, all spam, only 6 didn’t relate to fake leather bags or other stuff including coupons…