The third good use one could put the Pi to, and use it thoroughly is as a Media Server. And that’s where Plex comes into the picture! I know, it’s nothing new — since probably the inception of RPi, there have been numerous such apps and OSs which have done the same — XBMC ports, Kodi, and likewise. But I have had mixed experiences with them — beyond the initial “aha!”, the experience wasn’t what one could “delightful!” in the long run. I think the biggest hassle for me was loading the media, to start with. This was followed by other aspects, like account management, supported formats (or the lack of it), and what not.
Continue reading RPi resurrection – Pt. III – Plex Media ServerCategory: general
RPi resurrection – Pt. II – NFS
The second good use you could put your Pi, more so if you have unused external HDDs lying around, is to make an NFS out of it! I’ll spare mirroring the details here, there are many good references on how to go about creating a Samba server. For example, this one.
Since my laptop’s storage is limited, oftentimes it started complaining, as soon as any space-consuming operation started. At that point, I often had to make some hard life choices! :), you know, of the “shall I keep the big file or zap it!” kinds.
Continue reading RPi resurrection – Pt. II – NFSRPi resurrection – Pt. I – Pi-hole
Couple months ago, got to know about the Pi-hole project. It’s an ad-block server that can you can configure at the network level. That is, it can be configured as the DNS in your home router.
Of course, the benefit of network-wide ad-blocking is that it does its job in all of your home devices. If however, your router does not allow configuring a DNS — then you’d have to configure the DNS on a per-device level. While it may sound painful, but trust me, it’s worth it!
Continue reading RPi resurrection – Pt. I – Pi-holeStreaming (only) audio using an old AppleTV (and a few nuances, thereof)
Oh, the ever-unsettled human!
In this age of wireless everything, I chose to stay ‘wired’ for a long time, especially when it came to music. Reason: although I don’t (can’t) claim to be an audiophile, I do appreciate hi-fidelity (hi-fi) music. Hi-fi audio is soothing even at high amplitudes, and I think good tracks deserve a listening, and not just a hearing! In other words, I am not a .mp3 guy, but more of a .wav (or .flac, if you please) person. Uncompressed/lossless audio rules!
My audio rig is a simple (non-wireless) amp and a pair of monitors, and it pretty much serves my purpose.
Continue reading Streaming (only) audio using an old AppleTV (and a few nuances, thereof)
The glorious 'threat/reward' model
We have witnessed this since our childhood. Right from our homes, to our schools, colleges, and finally in our jobs. The glorious ‘threat/reward’ model! As the name suggests, it’s an approach where a certain set of actions lead (or are known to lead) to a certain reward (candy, toys, perks, H1B, and of course “that-irresistible-promotion”). On the flipside, non-compliance to a given, pre-defined set of laid-out steps, leads to ‘threats’, or a consequence of those threats (read: no candy, no perks, …and..well, you get the point.)
Kindle-ing
I’m highly impressed by Kindle. Not just the device — I don’t have one — but the whole idea around it; and what Amazon has done with it. I’m in awe! No, seriously.
While we were busy reading about gadget wars, and tech-websites busy bombarding us with feature comparisons of Kindle, and Nook and what-not — Amazon did something very smart: it created a Kindle plugin for every platform known to mankind…Android, iOS, Windows..you name it (ok maybe not all, but you get the idea!). It was blessing for people like me who might want to read something at their own convenience. All my devices are synched..so that takes care of remembering the page number/bookmarks etc.
At this point however I must confess that the intent of this particular post was not exactly blowing Kindle’s trumpet..but rather to talk about a nifty little extension that they created for Chrome, which allows me to send any webpage to my Kindle library in Kindle format with just a click (aka ‘automagically’)!
I consider it as one of the coolest things I’ve been enlightened with recently — gives me the flexibility of not just bookmarking a webpage — I have thousands of those will-read-it-someday ones, but rather going several steps further and making that webpage/article available on all my Kindle-app devices. This means that I have the convenience of (re-)visiting those articles/bookmarking them/reading them in oddest of places — all at my disposal! That’s übercool and so very thoughtful!
About Mavericks
One of the best things Apple has done with OSX Mavericks is the feature of keeping the extended desktop (external monitor) separate. In the sense that, unlike before, it’s somewhat disconnected from the main desktop. This means that it’s now possible to have maximised applications on each of the desktops — and thus fixing the limitation in the previous versions of OSX where an app could be maximised on either of the screen. It beats me on how did that feature seep-in in the first place.
Anyway, so again, unlike before, AppleTV now allows you to use the connected monitor as a secondary desktop as well. Finally, someone seems to have put brains into these pesky little flaws.
Meanwhile…
How could I not know that such a cool product existed..until yesterday when I read about them being acquired by Google?! I tried out Flutter yesterday, and it definitely, is a remarkable idea put into being. Kudos to the team!
PS: Using Flutter app you can control various applications on your PC/Mac using you hand-gestures — changing songs in a media player for instance.
Update (Oct/10): OK, after about a week of usage — I still feel it’s a cool product. Just that the camera motion-detection is a bit too sensitive IMHO — I end up switching the song whenever I touch my face/hair. 😉
DB course
Over the past few weeks I’ve been taking a database course, and I must say, it’s well-worth the time (whatever meager amount) I’m able to invest.
Thanks to Sri, and his persistence on us taking it.
I have taken a so-called DBMS course in academics twice, but never have I had the perspective as this course has given me. Thank you Prof. Jennifer Widom and the team of Stanford University who’ve taken efforts to come up with such a course and have had a vision of the larger good.
I would highly recommend it to all the software engineers, especially those from India.
Here’s the link for the ongoing class.