Stephen Phillips has written an excellent, comprehensive tutorial in which he measures his broadband speed (ping, upload and download) and then sends the data to a free service called Loggly. Really interesting stuff and a great use for an always-connected-via-ethernet-cable Pi. I think I’ll probably do it myself with my print server! Read all about it here.
In a previous post, I told you the steps to stream from the Pi to a VNC player on your phone or browser. That method no longer works for Chrome because Google have decided that the VNC plugin isn’t secure enough. Justin Drentlaw contacted me about this and has proposed a new solution to the problem – stream output to an <img> tag using Node.JS. It’s pretty nifty, although he’s not sure if it will cope with multiple clients connecting to it at the same time. Read more here.
Matthew Mombrea had a problem. He provides hosting and runs his own servers and needs monitoring tools to let him know when they go down. Of particular concern was being notified at night without his wife being woken up. So, he took a Pibrella and wrote his own daemon script that cycled through all his servers, checking to make sure they were working and, after a certain number of failures, the Pibrella would light up and sound the buzzer. He’s written more about the process he went through to get it all working on his blog and he’s published his code on GIthub.
So, it’s finally here! It’s General Election Day in the UK!
This is just a brief blog post to encourage you to get out and vote. People died to get you your vote and it is incredibly important to make your voice heard.
I’m still unsure of who to vote for. Let me just say this: I’m a Christian, and believe me that doesn’t make it easier! We’ve done a series on Politics and Religion at our church over the past few weeks – asking what the Bible says about different policies and that kind of thing – and I’m just as conflicted now as I was before, but in a different way. If nothing else it has helped me to focus on looking at the policies rather than just looking at the leadership abilities of a prospective Prime Minister. Personal leadership skills are, of course, important, particularly in foreign policy matters, but of paramount importance at this time (in my opinion) are the policies on the economy, social care/welfare and the NHS. I’m in the awkward position of seeing policies in all the major parties that are attractive, while at the same time seeing policies in those same parties that I find abhorrent. I’m firmly on the side of wanting to see real social change in our country. But, and this is a big But, we need a strong economy in order to support social change. I’m sure, if you’ve been paying attention to what the parties have been saying recently, you can see my problem. Conservative or Labour? It’s just a toss-up at the moment. I’m also faced with the fact that I live in a strong Conservative constituency so it’s unlikely my vote will make much of an impact anyway – but that won’t stop me voting!
I guess I’ll just have to make up my mind by the time the polls close!
Absolutely nothing, on the face of it. I just want to encourage those who have a say to make themselves heard.
Normal service will be resumed later!
Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Allen Heard is running a three-day “Tech Dojo” in Rhyl, North-East Wales from Monday 27th-Wednesday 29th July. Some of the activities on offer are as follows:
The event runs from 10am-2pm on all three days in St Ann’s Church Hall and is aimed at children 10 and above.
Creative Technologists is a 12-month long mentoring programme for 16-21 year olds. You can read more about the programme here. Thanks to Ben Nuttall, who has just published a post on the Raspberry Pi Foundation blog, we now know much more about this year’s intake. In the post, we’re introduced to the lucky 9 participants and find out where in the country they’re based and what their interests are. So, if you’d like to know more about this great young people, head over to the Foundation’s blog.
