I was recently confronted with the “problem” that I wanted to add a reminder for me on every last day in the month.
Google Calendar does not have such an option, but Google Tasks has! So just add a reoccurring task, that will then automatically show up in you calendar.
If you have the same problem like me, that the mouse wheel of you beloved Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 is not working in some applications and games, you need the Microsoft drivers for it.
Unfortunately, the new Mouse and Keyboard Center, from Microsoft does not support some older Hardware anymore and my 8000er mouse is one of them.
But it’s still working on Windows 10 for example to just install the older IntelliPoint Drivers in the latest version 8.2. The only problem is, they are not easy to get. Microsoft only provides a 7.x version.
I can provide the version 8.2 here, as long as the my limits are not reached on the server.
One week ago, my Linux NAS decided to spam me with mails, while I was sitting in a bar. Nothing is more disturbing, while having a nice chat and drink a beer, than your home server screaming about a failed RAID. I have to admit, I knew the RAID will fail soon, since one of the HDDs already was marked bad by SMART for some weeks…
Anyway, I shut down the server remotely and ordered immediately two new Seagate 4 TB NAS Drives. They arrived soon, but then my struggle begun. I really had no idea how to replace the HDDs in the RAID array and then grow the RAID to the new size of the HDDs, since my old drives where only 2 TB.
After some time of Google research I was aware of the steps to perform the procedure and it’s fairly easy!
(Be aware that identifier in your system might be different! Perform this steps at your own risk and make a backup before you perform anything on your system!)
thomas@omv: parted /dev/sdb GNU Parted 2.3 Using /dev/sdb Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) mklabel gpt Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sdb will be destroyed and all data on this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue? Yes/No? yes
(parted) mkpart ext4 0% 100% (parted) print Model: ATA ST4000VN000-1H41 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 4001GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 4001GB 4001GB ext4 (parted) quit
thomas@omv: mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1
thomas@omv: cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdb1[3] sda1[2]
1953382208 blocks super 1.2 [2/1] [_U]
[=======>.............] recovery = 35.2% (688880832/1953382208) finish=120.2min speed=175217K/sec
unused devices: <none>
thomas@omv: mdadm /dev/md0 -f /dev/sda1 mdadm: set /dev/sda1 faulty in /dev/md0 thomas@omv: mdadm /dev/md0 -r /dev/sda1 mdadm: hot removed /dev/sda1 from /dev/md0
thomas@omv: cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdc1[2] sdb1[3]
1953382208 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]
unused devices: <none>
thomas@omv: mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --size=max
mdadm: component size of /dev/md0 has been set to 3906886471K
unfreeze
thomas@omv: cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdc1[2] sdb1[3]
3906886471 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]
[============>........] resync = 58.2% (2273807926/3906886471) finish=190.3min speed=128079K/sec
unused devices: <none>
thomas@omv: parted /dev/md0 GNU Parted 3.2 Using /dev/md0 Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) print Model: Linux Software RAID Array (md) Disk /dev/md0: 4001GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 2000GB 2000GB ext4 (parted) resizepart 1 100% (parted) print Model: Linux Software RAID Array (md) Disk /dev/md0: 4001GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 4001GB 4001GB ext4 (parted) quit
I repeated some steps in a virtual machine for this blog post, so if you find some mismatches in the sizes etc. its most likely from that. Feel free to drop a comment for errata requests! 🙂
Recently my cable modem refused to connect to my provider, stating “Connection Refused”. The provider (UPC Austria) stated, that they have to come to my place and make some measurements. But this will be in one week…. WTF?? One week without internet? No way!
Fortunately, my provider offers a service, that every router provides two networks, a private one for the single customer, and a free network for all customers of UPC. This “UPC Wi-Free” was also available from some neighbours of mine.
It would be easy to connect all of my PCs to the network, but this is not enough for me. I needed a better solution. Also the PC of my girlfriend refused to connect to this network, my big PC has no WiFi and the server for sure not. Also the chromecast and the firestick…. no I will not configure all devices to configure them later again!
My previous setup included the router from my provider connected to my own router, a Fritz Box. All my devices are then behind the Fritz Box. So the only thing I had to change was to replace the UPC router with my Raspberry PI.
My starting point was the following:
First I powered up the Raspberry and was curious what I had done with this firmware before. Apparently, I used it before for some photographing stuff… 🙂 Anyway, first the Debian needed to be updated from 7 (wheezy) to 8 (jessie).
First we make sure the current system is up to date:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free rpi
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
The following content belongs to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:
network={
ssid="UPC Wi-Free"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
eap=PEAP
identity="your@e.mail"
password="password"
phase1="peaplabel=0"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
}
auto lo iface lo inet loopback # give the ethernet a static ip for acting as DHCP Server auto eth0 allow-hotplug eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 # configure the WiFi interface and enable auto start auto wlan0 allow-hotplug wlan0 iface wlan0 inet manual wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf iface default inet dhcp
sudo service networking restart ping google.de PING google.de (173.194.116.111) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from fra02s27-in-f15.1e100.net (173.194.116.111): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=23.2 ms 64 bytes from fra02s27-in-f15.1e100.net (173.194.116.111): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=35.2 ms 64 bytes from fra02s27-in-f15.1e100.net (173.194.116.111): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=30.6 ms
sudo apt-get install isc-dhcp-server
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
authoritative;
log-facility local7;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.1.201 192.168.1.250;
option routers 192.168.1.1;
}Now we can start the server:
sudo service isc-dhcp-server restart
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o eth0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o wlan0 -j ACCEPT
sudo apt-get install iptables-persistent
# Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Tue Jan 5 19:22:29 2016 *nat :PREROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] :INPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :POSTROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE COMMIT # Completed on Tue Jan 5 19:22:29 2016 # Generated by iptables-save v1.4.21 on Tue Jan 5 19:22:29 2016 *filter :INPUT ACCEPT [1:52] :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [1:152] -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o eth0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o wlan0 -j ACCEPT COMMIT # Completed on Tue Jan 5 19:22:29 2016
sudo bash -c 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward'
Update:
THX to the users u/ZoLustIkErNogWelEen and u/Q3_benji who pointed out I forgot to write down the steps with the sources.list and the activation of the ipV4 forwarding!
Update2:
THX to Rob who showed me a mistake in the post!
All these years I wanted to buy myself a slider for time lapses. All these years they where to expensive for me. The good ones like the Stage One from http://www.dynamicperception.com/ will cost you, depending on the configuration up to $1,250.00. Without shipping to Europe. Even the small ones like the Rhino Slider EVO Carbon are at least $500, again without shipping. So I decided to build my own.
I ordered some aluminum pipes, a aluminum plate, four teflon bearings, two aluminum blocks and used a 3D printer for some other parts. After some time of sticking, milling, drilling and printing, this is the outcome.
Next, I will order a Astro devices with the linear mount.
EDIT: Dropbox recently closed the public folder system where I store my camera database. Therefor the app was crashing while updating the database. I fixed this issue and the new version 1.3.0 is going live now.
Due to the overall great response and the high number of mails from users of my Shutter Speed Calculator i’m glad to announce here: Night Fox – Shutter Speed Calculator for Android!
The App features a simple interface to input your camera, your focal length and the tolerance in pixels. After that you can simply hit the calculate button and read the suggested speeds.
If you cannot find your camera in the list, simply write me an email or leave a comment. I can add cameras live and you just have to hit the “Download Camera File” Button to load the newest definition data. If you enjoy the app, please leave a comment and help me improve the interface and the user experience!
You can get the app for free from here:
If you want to learn more about how it works, check out my two other posts:
https://www.tl-photography.at/stars/shutter-speed-calculator-for-night-sky-photographing/
https://www.tl-photography.at/stars/night-sky-photography-shutter-speed-calculator/
After a short trip away from home, we found our chili plant sad and t
thirsty in our apartment.
I thought it might be nice to see the recovering in faster speed. I took every 15 sec a picture for nearly two hours.
Thanks to my friend Marcus, i was able to shoot some nice pictures from the moon eclipse today in the morning. Additionally it was also a Blood Super Moon! This happens pretty rarely and the next time will be 2033.
Check it out!
Some months ago I posted that i’m building my own LED ring in order to get some nice closeup shots and have something special for portraits. The project was on hold for some time, but I got back to it, and now I have my first working prototype. Here two picture of flowers I took with the ring and my 17-40 mm.
Here I have also some shots of the ring itself. I already have some ideas of improvement. The mayor problem is that the ring is very long and on my 17-40 mm I can see the ring at 17-19 mm. Also I’ll go for SMD power LEDs to get even more light. Also a connection to the camera is mandatory. Maybe I’ll think of a E-TTL connection via a small micro controller.
Update2: Because of the massive amount of traffic I received I had to disable the live measurement and block some IPs who where causing my server to slow down…
Update: Here are the measurements from the 20. of March, the day of the solar eclipse. And as you can see the grid operators were well prepared. The frequency was actually less fluctuating than the days before.
Today I decided to take again online my grid frequency measurement unit. In some days there will be a solar eclipse in Europe and maybe we will notice a slight fluctuation of the frequency during the eclipse. If it will be a sunny day, the shadow of the moon will race over the ground and will switch of the PV plants in Europe. The installed PV generation in Europe is according to this LINK 81,5 GW. But the overall installed power is more that 1300 GW. So a black out will not happen.
But so far, have fun:
The grid frequency is a very important measurement factor of the grid. In the electric grid, the balance between generation and demand, due to the lack of a high number of storage, have to be equal at every time. The frequency is a performance indicator in which state this balance is. Lower than 50 Hz the generation is less than the demand, and vice versa. The frequency is therefore used to adapt the power output of power plants to the demand.
