NSOddity

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 11:43:57 -0500

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

I've been reading a bit about the Steam Deck.

Of course, I started thinking... What if someone created a small device with a Zen2 chip, and LPDDR5 RAM like the Steam Deck. But instead of built in storage, they gave you an M.2 slot? Unless Valve was subsidizing the cost of the Steam Deck, you would think a device like that could be made less expensively than the Steam Deck.

I could replace my desktop PC with something like that.

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 16:45:22 -0500

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

Watched A Quiet Place part 2. It's obvious nobody in the story has played Monster Hunter, or any other RPG.

After killing the first two creatures in part 1, the obvious thing to do would be crafting a sweet armor set.

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 17:10:13 -0500

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

NullSpaceOddity updated their cover photo

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 18:48:39 -0500

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

Had an epiphany today regarding the digital US Dollar, and the inevitable death of coinage.

I work in the gambling industry. Currently, there is a coin shortage in the US, and nickels are particularly hard to come by for businesses. When coinage is low, we have had to set redemption terminals to pay out cash, and print a voucher for the remaining change. A lot of these places are frequented by the elderly, who absolutely must have their change, so the place of business pays out of their register, and we end up having to come tally and pay stacks of sub $1 tickets.

My thought was when the Federal Reserve finally wants to roll out the digital Dollar, they will work on replacing coin first. Point of sale systems will offer an option at the end of a transaction: 1) Receive coins 2) Receive a printed voucher with a QR code.
The voucher would be scanned by an app (from your bank, or Paypal, Venmo, etc). The change would be deposited into your account.

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 23:32:40 -0500

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

I had forgotten how unforgiving old RPGs can be.
Took a break from the main story in Phantasy Star IV to do some side quests. After spending an hour or so chasing down lost dogs, and where to buy cakes for lost students, I ventured out into a cave to search for a lost child. I was pretty much on autopilot, stomping everything in my path. However, there was some kind of boss inside the cave that wiped my party... and I had forgotten all about saving before I ventured in. I guess modern games have made me forget the old ways :-p

Image/photo

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 23:09:47 -0500

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

Finished the final chapter of Attack on Titan manga tonight.

I thought it was satisfying, but bittersweet. Especially when you look at the last few pages, and then go back to the nap under the tree in chapter 1.

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 13:31:40 -0500

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

After being a GNOME user for nearly 20 years, I decided to go all-in with KDE Plasma, and see what it was like.

I had found previous KDE versions confusing and ugly. So far, the Plasma desktop is very nice! One thing I really enjoy, is the default settings and appearance are intuitive and attractive. BUT... if you don't like something, there are options to change nearly everything. GNOME's simplicity is nice, but over the last few years found myself using the native GNOME applications less and less due to missing options. And I'm not a big fan of how GNOME 40 is even closer to Mac OS 11.

I have swapped the vast majority of my GTK programs for QT equivalents. GNOME Boxes is the only one I haven't found an alternative for. I was using it as a manager for a number of SSH sessions, and still haven't found an alternative.

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 16:13:36 -0600

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

A couple questions for my fellow Zot friends. I didn't think these were worthy of a post to the support forum.

1) The notifications in my stream do not seem to be working anymore. I am using the default theme, and the only thing changed is the background. I can see them if I log into the Nomad mobile app. Is there a new option to hide them?

2) Say I want to create a clone for the purpose of having a place to post in case my hub is temporarily down. Can I do that without cloning files and photos? I don't want to use a lot of someone else's server resources.

The Open Book Project: Open source ebook reader hardware

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 21:51:59 -0600

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

Something for me to watch. A project for a hardware e-book reader. So far, the screens used on the device are a bit smaller than the one in my Kobo (and lower resolution). But this could change! Would be neat to see some 3D printed cases available as well some day.

Linkies:
The Open Book Project

Project page on Hack-A-Day

Image/photo

My workflow for ripping audiobooks from CD in Linux

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:18:09 -0600

NullSpaceOddity

nsoddity@hubz.secretlair.me

My wife loves listening to audiobooks. I'd rather not give more money to Amazon via Audible, so we use the local library often.
The library offers audiobooks on CD. Over the years, my method for converting the CD's into a usable digital format has changed. I thought I would share my current workflow. It isn't perfect, and could probably be simplified further. But it works for me.

Software Required:
ABCDE - A command line CD ripper
sox - A command line audio processing tool
opusenc - A command line encoder for the Opus audio codec.
Kid3-QT - a tag editor for numerous audio formats. You could probably use something else if you wish.

You will need a bit of space for this method, as we will be ripping up to 15 CD's worth of audio to WAV.
As an aside, my desktop PC is running Archlinux, with Gnome as the desktop environment.

Step One: Ripping The Discs
When you obtain audiobooks on CD, you generally get a plastic clamshell of five to fifteen discs.
First, I open the file manager (Nautilus) and navigate to a work folder where I will be ripping the discs to. Then, right clicking in Nautilus gives an option to open a terminal to that location.
After inserting the first disc, I enter the following in the open terminal:
abcde -1 -o wav -x -N
The flags at the end will do the following: -1: Rips the disc to a single file. -o wav: WAV audio format will be use for output. -x: eject the disc when complete -N: Do not prompt for anything additional, and begin ripping immediately. ABCDE will rip the disc into a folder named something like "Unknown". Once complete, I tab to the file manager window, and open the folder. Click on the audio file and press "F2" to rename. I will rename the first file to "01.wav".
This is repeated for the remaining discs. All that is needed, is to insert the next disc, and tab back to the terminal window. Pressing the up arrow key will bring up the last command entered. Press enter, and when finished rename the output file to the next increment (02.wav, 03.wav, etc.)

Step Two: Bundling the files
When you have completed ripping the CDs, you should have a folder of sequentially numbered WAV files (representing the discs). You will either navigate to this folder using your command line window, or you can right click in the Nautilus file manager window and open a terminal here. We are going to use the Sox audio processing tool to combine all of the WAV files into a single FLAC file. I do it this way, because FLAC is lossless, and we want to lose no quality before our final compression. Also, Sox can't encode to Opus, so we are unable to combine steps. In the terminal window, type sox 01.wav 02.wav 03.wav.... etc. I just have to type the sequence number, then hit tab to have the Linux terminal autocomplete the ".wav" at the end. Once you have all of the WAV file names in sequence, the last file name will be the name of your book and ".flac". Here is an example: sox 01.wav 02.wav 03.wav 04.wav 05.wav 06.wav 07.wav 08.wav 09.wav final.flac. Pressing enter will make Sox read all of the WAV files in sequence, and compress the output into a single lossless FLAC file.

Step Three: Encoding and Finishing Touches
Now that you have a single FLAC file containing your entire audiobook, we can compress it using the Opus codec. Opus is a FOSS codec that provides exceptional compression and quality for speech. In the terminal window you had previously used for the last step, type the following: opusenc --speech --bitrate 24 final.flac final.opus. This will optimize output for spoken word content, set the bitrate to 24kbps, and make the final output file name "final.opus". Opusenc has a nice little progress meter so you can see if you have time to grab a drink or not. Once encoding is complete, I tab back to the Nautilus file manager window, and right click on the final output file. Then choose to open it in the Kid3 tag editor. From here, I add the book name, author, performer, year, set genre as audiobook, and drag and drop the cover art. Once you save, you can rename the final output file how you wish.

Congrats! You have converted 15 CDs worth of material to a single file that is under 200MB. For playback, my wife uses Alex Kravchenko's Smart AudioBook Player. It has some nice features such as being able to set only a specific folder for audiobook storage (as opposed to scanning all media), easy to browse library, good cover art support, and an internal system for bookmarking the audio.