[PLUG] What I am doing

[Ben Koenig]

I'll chime in the projects I'm working on to keep myself active in 
between jobs. I'm currently riding out the wave of chaos in 2020 and 
getting back into the land of tech support in 2021.


To share my progress on various hobbies I'm setting up a blog to keep 
those who may be interested tuned into what I'm working on. However, 
since I'm opposed to the aggressive use of javascript and social media 
integrations common in platforms like wordpress I'm setting up a leaner 
CMS system using python and django/wagtail. I have more control of how 
the data is handled with the downside of having to code a lot of it myself.


I'm also applying my interest in data analytics and pattern recognition 
to the problem of Slackware's activity level. By creating some python 
scripts that parse all slackware changelogs into a more machine readable 
format, I can experiment with different ways to present the same data. 
Slackware changes on a daily basis but the format used to communicate 
those changes requires a certain level of expertise to fully understand.


At the moment I have the data parsed and am experimenting with ways to 
present that data using gnuplot. Since the only measure of the distro's 
"aliveness" comes from the changelog many people in the linux community 
wrongly assume that the distro is dead or is not compatible with the 
latest software in the linux community. A visual display of the trends 
over time should help to illustrate the growth of the distro over time.


In addition to that I'm waiting on Slackware 15 to continue working on 
my Pixel Slate. I replaced the ChromeOS firmware (installed by google) 
with a regular EFI implementation that allows me to install any OS since 
it's just an intel x86_64 tablet. Slackware -current has all the drivers 
but I need to spend some time fiddling with the higher level packages 
for full touchscreen support in the desktop. This is hard to do since 
-current is in a constant state of change so once 15 comes out (Real 
Soon Now!) I should be able to get everything organized to create a 
touch oriented set of packages for Slackware on the Pixel Slate.


Those are the things occupying space in my brain at the moment, but I 
occasionally run into other little things that are interesting which is 
a large motivator for some sort of blog to throw it out for anyone who 
may be interested. This whole topic actually reminded me that I still 
need to send a patch to the eudev project for a small bug I found..

-Ben


On 12/4/20 9:57 PM, Ken Stephens wrote:
> Enjoyed the meeting last night.  Nice to see some of the regulars and some
> new people I did not recognize.  I  retired from Intel 8 years ago.  I am
> now back in my summer between 7th and 8th grade, but with money.  So much
> more fun.
>
> I am playing with the Nvidia Jetson Nano.  I followed Paul W. McWhorter
> <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGs0VKk2DiYxP-ElZ7-QXIERFFPkOuP4_>'s
> lessons on artificial intelligence.  There are 62 lessons that take one
> from beginning Python through face and object detection and recognition
> with OpenCV.  The Nano uses Ubuntu 18.04.
>
> I have two Raspberry Pi Zero's in service.  One for my Tesla Model 3 video
> downloads to my server.  Another is just streaming video.  These are very
> small footprint computing platforms.  They use Raspbian buster.
>
> I use a Tinkerboard with a camera that uses debian stretch.  I had it
> connected to my midi keyboard once playing some software I have forgotten.
>
> I have a Raspberry Pi 2+ with openCPN loaded for navigation on my
> sailboat.  Thas use a Raspbian buster distribution.
>
> I run a file/print server and a laptop workstation on Fedora.  Currently
> the server is on Fedora 33 while the workstation is on 31.  Discovered a
> Dropbox did not upgrade when moving from 31 on the server.  So some
> investigation is in order.
>
> Would like to get some others to say what they are doing for fun or profit.
>
> Ken
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