2015 in review – report generated by WordPress

, 1 min read

See the fireworks Elmar Klausmeier's Weblog created by blogging on WordPress.com. Check out their 2015 annual report. Here is an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it…

One Free Invite for the OnePlus X

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Today I received an invite for the OnePlus X. The code is: GL71-90E4-75E1-DBA7. This invite is valid for 3 days.

nginx: 413 Request Entity Too Large - File Upload Issue

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I got above error message in nginx. Stackoverflow post 413 Request Entity Too Large - File Upload Issue had all information to resolve the issue. The solution was written by User Arun. One has to edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and add in http{...} client_max_body_size 15900M ; and /etc/php/php.ini ;…

Small Scale Computing

, 2 min read

Below is a short overview of small scale computers for use in embedded computing. Intel Galileo, single core Quark/Pentium, ca. 100 USD, <15 W Intel Edison, dual core Atom Silvermont, 500 MHz, ca. 100 USD, <1 W Raspberry Pi, single core ARM, 700 MHz, ca. 35 USD, ~1 W Arduino series, e.g.,…

Working with Windows Junctions in Python

, 2 min read

I had to detect Windows junctions (similar but not identical to symbolic links) in Python. On stackoverflow.com I read the following Python code given by a user named eryksun for handling them, as os.islink() does not work for junctions. The routines access Windows functions CreateFileW(),…

Photographs from Apollo Mission to Moon

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Brian Koberlein mentioned that NASA provided photos from Apollo moon mission on Flickr.com. Below is one:

Suppressing Advertisement on Web-Pages a.k.a. Ad-Blocking

, 2 min read

Advertisements on web-pages is ubiquitous. Without advertisement even this blog could not be offered free of charge. But advertisement can be a real nuisance with its blinking, flickering, moving, and distracting appearance. Sometimes they even contain malware. There are two simple remedies for…

Upgrading from OxygenOS 1.0.0 to 1.0.3 on the OnePlus One Smartphone

, 2 min read

I upgraded my OnePlus One smartphone from Oxygen 1.0.0 to 1.0.3, see Installing OxygenOS 1.0 on the OnePlus One Smartphone. Download OxygenOS 1.0.3 from OxygenOS 1.0.3 with the latest Stagefright patches, and check MD5. Then upload the zip-file. adb push ~/Download/ONE_12_A.01_150827.zip…

Linux pam and /etc/shells

, 1 min read

I learned the hard way that a user in /etc/passwd not having a shell specified in /etc/shells is not able to log-on. On Ubuntu /etc/shells looks like this: /bin/sh /bin/dash /bin/bash /bin/rbash /usr/bin/tmux /usr/bin/screen On Arch it looks like this: /bin/sh /bin/bash So if you provide a user…

Urban planning

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As I commute to work with my e-bike I became more and more interested in bicycle lanes. It looks that this a coming trend in many modern cities. See for example New York, New York's streets? Not so mean any more, a talk by former chief of the department of transport Janette Sadik-Khan under the…

Output of lstopo from hwloc

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This is the output of lstopo --of png > ~/tmp/lstopo.png for a machine with an AMD octacore FX 8120, bulldozer architecture, see AMD Bulldozer CPU Architecture Overview. One can just type lstopo, which shows the same in a separate window. lstopo is part of hwloc in Arch or hwloc in…

Accessing Android phone via USB cable

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Since Android 3 it is no longer possible to access the phone via USB mount. The reason being that Android puts everything into a single partition. As this single partition is always mounted by Android it is not easy to have two users (Android system and PC user) to write on this single partition.…

International Space Station after undocking of STS-132

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Awesome picture from NASA.

PC overheating

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When the CPU is not properly cooled down, then the PC crashes, see below video. The solution for this particular case: Upgrade the BIOS.

Lexware Financial Office Pro 2015 does not work with wine

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Today I received a free copy of a student-version of Lexware Financial Office Pro 2015 including a license key. Lexware is a financial accounting software which is easy to use and quite well suited for small German enterprises. I installed wine 1.6.2 on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, which consumed almost…

Visiting GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt

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GSI Helmholtz Centre is a heavy ion research centre near Darmstadt. I visited this research facility on the 06-Jul-2015. It takes a couple of months to acquire a visiting day. Here are some impressions. I highly recommend the facility. Precious beam time is controlled here: Cabling: Combating…

Methods of Proof — Diagonalization

, 10 min read

Very clear presentation on the uncountability of the real numbers, and the halting problem. Further keywords: Cantor, natural numbers, real numbers, diagonalization, bijection, Turing halting problem, proof by contradiction. -- -- -- Quote -- -- -- A while back we featured a post about why learning…

Photograph from Space

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Awesome picture. Also see Photographs from Space by Karen L. Nyberg.

Commuting to Work with an E-Bike

, 3 min read

My current workplace in Frankfurt is 20 km from my home. In the past years I used the train to go there. Unfortunately the train became more and more unreliable. Sometimes the train had lots of delays, sometimes the train just didn't arrive, sometimes the train was heavily crowded, often the…

Hard-Disk and SSD Speed Comparisons

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I bought a new Mushkin SSD with 60 GB. These are the results with gnome-disk-utility. These are the benchmarks for the ADATA with 128 GB. Just for the records another speed test for a classical Seagate 1 TB hard disk drive, old but venerable. See also Hard-Disk and USB Drive Speed Comparisons.