Osmand Overlay
2021.07.06 - Nat Tuck
Setting up a raster image as an overlay in osmand is kind of tricky. Two resources: https://shallowsky.com/blog/mapping/osmand-making-overlay-maps.html https://docs.osmand.net/en/main@latest/osmand/map/raster-maps
Read more… ( ~1 Min.)Upgrading to Debian 11 Quick
2021.05.27 - Nat Tuck
The Debian Wiki provides some instructions to upgrade to a new release, but for systems with a lot of packages installed the process can be really slow.
Here’s the process I use to upgrade to a new Debian release.
Read more… ( ~3 Min.)Braxmobile Phone Unboxing
2021.04.25 - Nat Tuck
Smartphones are a nightmare for privacy and personal data security. One of the best options for a safe phone is an Android phone with a custom ROM that doesn’t include the standard apps and libraries from Google. Finding a phone that supports custom ROMs can take some effort, and then getting a ROM installed takes more effort. It’d be nice to just buy a phone already set up with Google-free Android, but there aren’t that many good options out there.
Read more… ( ~3 Min.)The Librem 5
2021.02.23 - Nat Tuck
I ordered a reasonably early Librem 5 . Now that I have it, I’d like to get it set up as my primary phone.
It’s effectively an early beta product, so there’s a bunch of issues. In this post I’ll track those issues so I can complain about them later.
Read more… ( ~2 Min.)Moving to Hugo
2020.05.10 - Nat Tuck
I’ve been relying on the Jekyll static site generator as my primary way to maintain a web site for a while, but it’s gotten a bit slow on large sites so it’s time to try something new. Hugo is a very similar tool with some optimization for speed. This is the second paragraph of this post. Third. Fourth.
Read more… ( ~1 Min.)SVG by Hand and by Code
2019.06.18 - Nat Tuck
This post is an attempt to walk through programattic generation of SVG files, step by step. Part 1: SVG By Hand Prereq: Kate Editor $ sudo apt install kate Simple SVG document: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <svg width="100" height="100"> <circle cx="50" cy="50" r="20" /> </svg> Exercises Ex 1 Paste the above document into Kate. Save it as “circle.svg” Open it in Inkscape and Firefox to confirm that it’s reasonable. Ex 2 Skim the SVG tutorial at W3 Schools SVG Tutorial By hand, using the Kate editor, create an SVG document with three concentric circles, colored as a bullseye.
Read more… ( ~3 Min.)The Netgear WNDR3700v4SH
2019.06.18 - Nat Tuck
A couple weeks ago I ordered a home router to run OpenWRT on, mostly to see how the performance compared to just using a mini-PC. The Netgear WNDR3700 series all seemed to have good support, so I ordered one on Amazon for $18. Getting it to work turned out to be a little bit more complicated than I expected. According to the OpenWRT wiki, there are 5 versions of the WNDR3700, numbered v1 through v5.
Read more… ( ~3 Min.)RStudio on Debian Buster
2019.06.05 - Nat Tuck
Rstudio hasn’t been built property for Debian 10 (buster), so here’s some hacks to get it to work. Problem 1: Get the RStudio Package Grab the Debian 9 installer from here: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download Install it with sudo dpkg -i <package> Problem 2: Missing libssl Grab the old libssl package from Debian Stretch (This is bad form and could potentially lead to security issues in the future, but is probably OK in practice in this case.
Read more… ( ~1 Min.)Tiny Tiny RSS
2019.05.09 - Nat Tuck
As part of my ongoing effort to decentralize my use of the web, I’m now hosting a web-based RSS feed reader called Tiny Tiny RSS. This post provides setup info if you have an account on fogcloud.org What is RSS? Why? RSS is a standard for distributing “feeds” of updates to websites. This makes it easy to follow a bunch of websites that update periodically without having to visit all of them to check for updates.
Read more… ( ~2 Min.)Trying to develop for Ubuntu Touch in 2019
2019.02.03 - Nat Tuck
My phone broke, and I decided to get myself an old phone and install Ubuntu Touch on it. Here’s the story of me trying to get an audiobook player working. The Setup Canonical, the makers of the Ubuntu distro, wanted to ship Ubuntu on phones at least as far back as 2010 when they announced their Unity desktop shell. It’s a great vision: Phones are computers, so they should run the same OS as any other computer.
Read more… ( ~8 Min.)You, Personally, Should Stop Using Facebook
2018.06.07 - Nat Tuck
When you use Facebook, instead of sharing posts with your friends, you share them with Facebook who then redistributes the posts for you. You have no privacy from Facebook in whatever part of your life happens there. That’s bad, but that’s not the whole problem. By chosing to use Facebook as your method to share things with your friends, you’re compelling them to use Facebook too. If they don’t log in, they’ll miss out on what you post.
Read more… ( ~8 Min.)