Category Archives: #Tech Lifestyle

Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you’re from.

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I always suspected that culture defines how technology is implemented.  The priorities that many in the West have differ greatly with that of Asian and African countries.   In many cases clashes. This is one of the many challenges when it comes to the implementation  of solutions to localized problems.

via MIT Review

 

Using NaturalReader for my text to speech

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Currently building a Win10 VM to run Natural Reader.  It will convert websites/pdfs/documents to MP3 for me to listen either while I am driving or doing chores.

 

A cool idea – A built-in wall vacuum

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Part of a future project !

Synergy on FreeBSD

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Got Synergy running on my FreeBSD machine.

  1. On Server(beastie0-192.168.1.1)
    1. #pkg install synergy
    2. edit ~/.synergy.conf
      • section: screens
        mdia-PC:
        beastie0:
        endsection: aliases
        beastie0:
        192.168.1.1
        mdia-PC:
        192.168.1.2
        end

        section: links
        mdia-PC:
        down = beastie0
        beastie0:
        up = mdia-PC
        end

    3. synergys
  2. On Client(mdia-PC-192.168.1.2)
    1. #pkg install synergy
    2. synergy 192.168.1.1

FreeBSD 11.1 on the desktop

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So I made the jump to using FreeBSD on the desktop and it’s beginning to grow on me. Some notes.

  • I got the Nextcloud client running after running into a bunch of issues with Qt5. This now allows me to keep my files in sync and makes the time on my BSD box that much more productive.  Workflow is now enhanced.
  • Using XFCE as my desktop with Compiz as a windows manager. I fell in in love with the cube multidesktop feature when I saw it at a Linuxworld years ago.
  • Now that I am doing things mostly from the terminal, it gives me the incentive and environment to automate more and more.
  • Have to look into some other browsers beyond Chromium and Firefox.
  • Once I have rdesktop and xfreerdp, I can manage my MS Windows systems without much issues.
  • My previous setup was a Win7 system with 3 monitors.  While I could use the same 3 monitors, I realized having 12 (3*4) desktops may have been a bit too much.  So now I have two monitors and thus 8 desktops.  A major jump in productivity

All in all, a challenging experience, but one that I am glad I did.

The TODO list

  • ZFS file system
  • Custom launcher(s)
  • Custom dashboard