Updated pdfbuild, version 3

This is my 'pdfbuild' bash script that converts 'tex' files to a PDF. You generate the '.tex' files in any way you want to build them. I used to build the latex files by hand, which was very slow and laborious, but gave extremely good results. Currently I'm building the …

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Tabbar!

Date Series Part 1 of Emacs for writers Tags emacs / org-mode

For a very long time I've had a major problem with tabbar and tabbar-ruler. Tabbar-ruler was very good... except it clobbered my Messages file so that if I wanted to see the word count of the document that I was then working on, there was every chance that I might …

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Redo Your To-Do List

Author - Heidi Grant Halvorson

As the new year approaches - and with it the inevitable wave of self-improvement plans - we've identified 10 strategies for advancing your career in 2016.

From recovering from an office blunder to learning why it doesn't pay to be Mr. (or Ms.) Nice Guy, this ten-point plan …

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restic scripts - amended to version 2

I'm now including my forget command in with my restic-check script because if its included in resticup then when restic-check is run it has about 30+ index files to delete, so its actually more efficent to run forget just once in a 24-hour period and then also run the prune …

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restic - backup

Having decided on using restic moving forwards, I've written several scripts, so here is the main one, 'resticup'.

Resticup

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restic - integrity checking

Its a very good idea to regularly check the integrity of your restic backups to hopefully find any problems before you have to use it to restore some files from backup. So this is my script called 'restic-check' which will run at 0100 from a cronjob. I know it works …

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restic - unlock

Sooner or later you will find that you're unable to do a backup or some backup checking because the repository is locked. This script will unlock the repository and is called 'restic-unlock'. Its not run from a cronjob, just from your terminal whenever its needed.

But BEWARE of killing a …

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Referencing a Newspaper Article in org-mode/latex

Date Series Part 1 of org2latex Tags org-mode / latex

For my current book that I'm writing on Second World War cookery recipes I'm using the 'British Newspaper Archive' and am here focussing on one newspaper article published in November 1939, not long after the war started.

Here is my bibtex reference -

@Article{0130,
  author =       {Shields Daily News},
  title =        {Rare …
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'pdfbuild' - from tex to PDF - version 2

This is my 'pdfbuild' bash script that converts 'tex' files to a PDF. You generate the '.tex' files in any way you want to build them. I used to build the latex files by hand, which was very slow and laborious, but gave extremely good results. Currently I'm building the …

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What’s On Your To-Don’t List?

by - Peter Bregman

When the first iPad came out, I bought it, became obsessed, and, within two weeks, returned it. Why did the obsession wear off so quickly?

It didn't.

I returned it because I was obsessed. I spent every free minute on it. Which left me with no free …

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Move TeX-Live xxxx

Date Tags TexLive

If you are finding that space in your root directory is getting less and you are begining to feel the pinch, then maybe you should consider moving TeX-Live to your home directory.

You can move it using rsync with this command -

rsync -axvvES --info=progress2 --remove-source-files /usr/local/texlive /home …
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Tips for coping in hot weather

Date Series Part 1 of Stay cool Tags cool
  • Shut windows and pull down the shades when it is hotter outside. You can open the windows for ventilation when it is cooler.

  • Stay out of the sun and don't go out between 11:00 and 15:00 (the hottest part of the day) if you're vulnerable to the effects …

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Sleeping in hot weather

Date Series Part 2 of Stay cool Tags cool
  • Cast aside your pyjamas and sleep naked if possible. If you do tend to get very hot and sweaty, then drape a beach towel over the bed and pillows to protect the bedding.

  • Open the windows - preferably more than one, on different sides of the house - to allow more air …

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org2latex - a yasnippet

This is my yasnippet template for use when building an org-mode file which will be exported into a'.tex' file and then you can use my 'pdfbuild' script to convert the latex file into a PDF file with no code lines to be entered, just follow the on-screen prompts.

# -*- mode …
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'pdfbuild' - from tex to PDF

This is my 'pdfbuild' bash script that converts 'tex' files to a PDF. You generate the '.tex' files in any way you want to build them. I =used= to build the latex files by hand, which was very slow and laborious, but gave extremely good results. Currently I'm building the …

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A puddle underneath the keyboard!

I've just come back from a hospital appointment and had one hell of a job logging back in to my computer. It was almost as if my keymaps had been changed. Whilst at the login screen the number '0' opened the menu containing "shut down"! So I thought that I'd …

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5 rules for taking creative criticism

This rings many bells for me, after taking many months writing a book I desperately need honest criticism about it for it to be even better. So please, give me feedback?

Rule 1

Us creatives can be pretty delicate when it comes to our work and ideas. If we're honest …

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ToDo List

Author - MissUnderstood Genius

Mr. Rats ToDo list

Doesn't this cartoon strip remind us of our everyday? Hell no!! I am not going to bore you to death with my story of the day. But, this cartoon surely urges me to help Mr. Rat create a To-Do list to prioritise his work. Because I am …

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5 Advantages of a To-Do List

by - Ian McKenzie

One of the fundamental tools for time management is that list of things you need to get done. It consolidates all your tasks in one place. From there you can prioritise them and tackle the important ones first.

There are 5 key advantages to maintaining a to-do …

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Why I use a ToDo List

I have used a "ToDo List" for a very long time. I suppose that it initially started by using a list written down on scraps of paper, and progressed to writing things down in a very small pocket-sized notebook when I started working on the Wards. This was very useful …

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How I've set up pelican - part 3 - Themes

Date Series Part 3 of Pelican Tags pelican

The easiest way to get a lot of themes for you to choose from is by installing them from the git repo, like this - cd git && git clone --recursive https://github.com/getpelican/pelican-themes This will allow you to choose from 99 themes!

So, what are they? Here are all …

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How I've set up pelican - part 2 - The conf files

Whichever pelican theme you use you will have to start customising your pelicanconf.py file, and possibly your publishconf.py file.

This is the basic pelicanconf.py file that was created during set-up in the previous post -

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How I've set up pelican

Date Modified Series Part 1 of Pelican Tags pelican

I used several sites showing various static-site generators to help me choose my site generator, ones that ranked them via various means, and which you could see a demo of the site. The main one is https://staticsitegenerators.net/ which shows you 363 separate sites! You can see from it …

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The productivity trick one author used to write over 40 books

Beginning with his first novel in 1847, Anthony Trollope wrote at an incredible pace.

Over the next 38 years, he published 47 novels, 18 works of non-fiction, 12 short stories, 2 plays, and an assortment of articles and letters.

Trollope achieved his incredible productivity by writing in 15-minute intervals for …

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Its a new look!

Date Tags new

Its the same site, but with a new look! Gone is all the "wordpress" cruft, and all the plugins which gave stats for various things, and the site is now using "pelican" as its background software. Pelican just generates the site, from text files on my computer, and then sends …

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New Obnam Manual

Date Modified Tags download / obnam

A new version of the Obnam Manual that now includes both the help file, the extended help file, and the 'man' page. This is version 1.9.2, with the date of 6 May 2015.

Download - removed as new version uploaded.

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An updated radio feeds script

The BBC are changing their radio feeds, and BBC national radio streams in both WMA and AAC+ have now been retired. This means that they are now all being sent in a mp3 format. As my previous script's BBC feeds failed to work, this is now the updated working script …

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mpd super-feed!

Following on from yesterday's post about getting BBC feeds working and playing with mpc, this one is used in mpd itself -

    #!/bin/bash
    set -e
    #: Title         : radiostreams
    #: Date          : December 2014
    #: Author        : Sharon Kimble
    #: Version       : 3.0
    #: Description   : to give a comprehensive set of MPD radio stations

    # Copyright (C) 2014, 2015 …
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At last, a working BBC radio feeds

Date Tags mpd

I've long been a fan of mpd (Music Player Daemon) but recently I've been frustrated in that it can't play the BBC radio feeds for some reason. So I've been looking for various working scripts, and I've found one, actually two as its a two-parter, but this works, so thanks …

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Do you have a 'recovery plan'?

Recently there was a fire in the flat next door to me, which therefore required us to evacuate our flats whilst the fire brigade dealt with it, and lead to the flat occupants being rehoused by social services as the flat was uninhabitable due to smoke damage. But it reminded …

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Emacs init from an org-mode file

Recently I've been setting up an org-mode file in emacs which holds my entire "init.el" to run emacs from. As its all quite stable now and working well, I'm putting it up here in case others want to try something similar.

Installation instructions

* installation Instructions
Then copy it into …
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UPDATE - 'beeb' is working again!

[TOC]

Beeb is working again with a new 'get_iplayer', version 2.90 which you can get with this command -

curl -kLO https://raw.github.com/dinkypumpkin/get_iplayer/latest/get_iplayer

and then once you've made it executable, and copied it to /usr/local/bin you need to update your radio and …

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Update on 'beeb'

Date Tags BBC / beeb

Due to changes at the BBC, 'beeb' is no longer able to download any programmes for radio or tv feeds. This is due to the BBC having removed the programme data feeds used by get_iplayer. At the moment there is no fix available, but when, if, they replace the feeds …

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An updated "plank!"

The plank version in Debian Jessie/Sid is a bit old, it being version 0.6.1-1~experimental1 and the plank project has moved on since then. The current version is 0.7.1 which was released on 23 September 2014, and there's talk of 0.8.0 too.

The …

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My `gitcron' script

As I'm now using git for version control of my latex documents that I am writing I have automated the committing to git. This is the script that I'm using, called gitcron -

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#!/bin/bash …
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Transferring books to a Kindle Fire

Debian see's a Kindle Fire as a mtp device1, so you have to mount it as jmtpfs /media/boudiccas/k2 where k2 is your device name, which then says -

##jmtpfs /media/boudiccas/k2
Unable to read MTPZ public exponent from ~/.mtpz-data, MTPZ disabledDevice 0 (VID=1949 and PID=0007 …
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Life on the bleeding edge 2 – get_iplayer

Features

  • Downloads MP4 streams from BBC iPlayer site with better quality than Flash player streams
  • Downloads Flash AAC/MP3 and WMA streams for radio programmes
  • Allow multiple programmes to be downloaded using a single command
  • Indexing of all available iPlayer programs
  • Caching of Index (default 4h)
  • Regex search on programme …
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Ranking of percentage of free space on your drives

I recently came across a rather splendid command that shows your drives and their percentage of free space. And it is -

df -hP |column -t |tee >( head -n1 > /dev/stderr ) |grep % |sort -k5nr

and in my case it shows this -

Filesystem  Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted                 on
/dev/sdd1   2 …
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QupZilla problems

Figure 1

A screenshot showing the problems that I'm having using Qupzilla with fluxbox/compton/plank. What you see there is a "ghost-image", qupzilla is not running, yet it still shows its icon in plank at the bottom, and its window outlines on the workspace. Its a mystery!

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'beeb'-v4.0

Another release of beeb which takes it to even greater heights! :) And just as an experiment I'm "self-hosting" the 'tar.gz' file so that it can be downloaded from here.

Documentation

This is the documentation for beeb [version 4.0] the all-singing, all-dancing, upgrade to get-iplayer!

The BBC has some …

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'ebuild- v2'

After having quite a few problems when I did my bi-daily, i.e. every other day, build of emacs, I've reworked my script which makes it easier to use.

Source code

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