Category Archives: Technology

Posts that relate to technology. Reviews, HOWTO’s, problems & solutions.

Firefox scrollbars “Jumping” or “Warping” instead of scrolling when clicked

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Recently, the scrollbar behavior of my Firefox web browser changed.   The “old” (and expected/desired) behavior is that if you click in the scrollbar area anywhere below the thumb, the thumb moves down one page.

However, the new behavior is that a normal click will “Warp” the thumb directly to the clicked location, scrolling the webpage a whole lot farther than desired.   (it used to be that a right-click would do the “warp”, which is a useful feature, not not necessarily one I want to be the default).

I found the answer here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1120904

The change in behavior is caused by gtk 3.0 and to fix it on Ubuntu Linux, I had to:

create ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

with contents:

[Settings]

gtk-primary-button-warps-slider = false

MicroMill Mach3 / LinuxCNC conversion complete

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I have mounted the parallel port break out board inside the enclosure of my ScanTek 2000 (Denford Micromill). I routed the parallel port cable out to the previous DB25 (RS-232) outlet on the case and sealed up the back.

bob_mounted

With the built in wire management trays, the job looks almost professional…except for the fact that I used a triangular piece of 1/4″ acrylic scrap I had for the mounting plate, so I had to orient the break out board at an angle. But since it’s inside the case, nobody can see it anyways. bob_mounted_closeup

 

parallel_port_cable_inside_panel

Outside the case, the only visible difference is that I took off the black “RS-232” sticker that used to live next to the DB-25 connector. Continue reading →

Ubuntu 14.04 Zoneminder PPA not showing images or videos in the web console

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When you use the Ubuntu package manager to install Zoneminder on Ubuntu 14.04 using the PPA, one configuration line defaults to the wrong path. This prevents the web console from showing you videos or events, although if you configure a camera it will capture pictures from it correctly and show you them in the Zone editing tools.

Specifically, under Options->Paths you need to change PATH_ZMS to:
/zm/cgi-bin/nph-zms

(adding the /zm to the front).

Error log messages look like the following:

ERR [socket_sendto( /var/run/zm/zms-299592s.sock ) failed: No such file or directory]

One other issue that could cause similar behavior is not having mod-cgi enabled in apache.

Making Thunderbird send messages in the background (like Outlook)

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My work recently changed over to using Office365.com for their email. As long as Office365 supports IMAP and SMTP (it does) I don’t mind so much, as I can continue to use Thunderbird on my desktop to access my email.

However, because the mail servers are no longer located “on-campus” the lag to the SMTP server is much more noticeable than before. When I pressed the “Send” button, Thunderbird would sit there for 20 seconds with a progress bar sending the mail, interrupting my flow of email processing much more noticeably than when the server was hosted on the same network.

So I tweaked a few advanced settings in Thunderbird by going into Thunderbird Preferences (Edit->Preferences), clicking the “Advanced” tab, then selecting the “config editor” button and promising to be careful. [Newer versions of Thunderbird have these options under the tools -> Options menu. ]

mailnews.show_send_progress false
mailnews.sendInBackground true
offline.send.unsent_messages 1

Telling thunderbird to not show the progress indicator only hides the dialog, but the compose window still sits up on your screen (with no visible indicator of what it’s doing) until the mail is sent, so you also need to turn on “sendInBackground” to make the compose window disapear immediately after you press send.

This makes the message go immediately to your Local Folders -> Outbox, but DOES NOT SEND IT, until you select File -> Send Unsent Messages. Hence the “offline.send.unsent_messages 1” which tells Thunderbird to send unsent messages (from Folders -> Outbox) whenever it can. It still takes 20-30 seconds for the message to be sent, but it is done in the background now.

How I melted my ANOVA Precision cooker

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anova_melted3

anova_melted2

I purchased an ANOVA precision cooker (a Sous-vide immersion heater) via their Kickstarter almost a year ago and have been having fun cooking things in water baths. (It makes cooking salmon so very easy….)

My wife told me about a recipe where you simmer a can of sweetened condensed milk in near boiling water for three hours to make Carmel. After my initial “But won’t it explode?” questions were answered (don’t use a pop top can and you are supposedly explosion safe…) I checked my ANOVA’s manual, and sure enough, it listed the Max temperature at 99 C, perfect for keeping water at a very low simmer without having to keep an eye on the range…[1].

Little did I know, the ANOVA can’t actually take being exposed to steaming water for 3 hours. Continue reading →

Original Pebble Review + Application / Watchface Recommendations

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pebble_jet_black
I finally jumped on the “SmartWatch” bandwagon (after the CST – “World’s Thinest Watch” Kickstarter I’d been waiting on for two years finally gave up the ghost) purchasing a refurbished (Jet Black, original plastic) Pebble for $60 from Meh.com.

I can’t imagine paying $300+ for an Android Wear or apple Smartwatch when you can get the original Pebble’s new on ebay and discount websites for $50-$60. It does everything you really want a smart watch to do, at a fraction of the price.
Built in features I use and love:
Continue reading →

Using rsync to selectively restore a backup (with/without dotfiles)

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If you have backed up your entire home directory, and are restoring it onto a new computer, sometimes you do not want to copy over all of the .dotfiles (hidden files and directories that start with a period) in your home directory. This can be especially useful if you are upgrading the operating system version and many applications are also upgraded, and you want to re-configure them manually.

To restore everything BUT the .dotfiles in the main root directory you can use the following rsync command (the command must be executed from inside the backed up home directory):

rsync -av - --exclude="/.*" ./ /home/NewHomeDir

Note that this WILL copy all .dotfiles in directories under the main home directory.

I do recommend keeping all of your old home directory dotfiles in a separate “dotfile” directory, because invariably you will need something from in them (such as an SSH private key, GPG key, etc…)

You can copy JUST the .dotfiles from the home directory (including recursing into .dotdirectories) with the following command:

rsync -av /path/to/sourcedir/.??* /path/to/dest

The .??* selects only files/directories in the sourcedir that start with a dot. Note that .* alone would select ALL files and directories in the sourcedir.