First python script

Did my first successful python scripts! The first simply imports the second, the second checks the existence of a network connection.

NTFS external drive

For fun, I checked my external drive while booted in Windows. Oh no! It needed to be defragmented! Defrag recommended CHKDSK as well.

Big mistake: One or both of them scattered a lot of my backup files (including the backups of this blog - quite a few entries gone until they turn up again). I'm afraid to look at my music...or my collection of Futurama episodes. Only fix is to hunt through the 'found' folder and put stuff away manually. Big mess.

Tesseract OCR

Tesseract is a very powerful OCR package that works only from the command line. Imagemagick is a very powerful image conversion toolkit. To OCR a PDF:

convert inputfile.pdf covertedfile.tiff
tesseract covertedfile.tiff textfile

. That's amazingly easy.

Deluge crash recovery

I just figured out that Deluge saves a quick-resume file in the same folder as the torrent (/home/me/.config/deluge/torrentfiles). I wondered how often it updates - now I suspect it updates every time Deulge successfully quits without an error.

If so, then a good idea is to quit and restart Deluge every 6 or 12 hours or so, thereby limiting the loss from a crash.

My external drive is NTFS, and likes to crash on occasion...so I might start setting my timer.

New MacBook - File Sharing

File sharing is finally easy. System Preferences -> Sharing -> Turn sharing on. Option to log in as the user for total access. At last. The MacBook and iBook share wonderfully. Haven't been able to get the Linux box or the XO laptop on board yet - they see the file shares in Avahi, but can't connect to them.

New MacBook - Migrating

The new MacBook arrived a couple days ago, and I finally touched it tonight. The new MacBook had OS 10.5, the old iBook has 10.3.9. The iBook wouldn't run the Migration Assistant, and I don't have a Firewire cable anyway...so we used the house wireless, I logged into the iBook through file sharing on the MacBook, and moved most of Library by hand. Great web page detailed which files to move...but can't find it any more.

Sharing Music Files Using Avahi

Success! I successfully shared my Linux (Ubuntu 7.10) music files to the Mac using Avahi on a wireless network. Now, if the Mac and Linux boxes are on the same network, the Mac can see and play any of the Linux songs.

How I set it up (surprisingly easy):

1. Install package mt-daapd for the service, and package avahi-discover as a diagnostic tool.
2. Open a web browser to localhost:3689, Username: (blank), Password: mt-daapd. The project is called Firefly Server.
3. On the Configuration tab, put in the directory to music files. On the Server Status tab, click Start Scan.
4. Open the Mac and launch iTunes. Look in the Shared section for the Firefly Server, and test play a file.

No mucking about with .config files, no command line work, no ports or services to modify.

We'll see if it works after a reboot. Still need to figure out how to share iTunes music with Rhythmbox, and how to share both wth the OLPC. Still need to figure out how to share video files, and other non-media files.