[Ed P]

All the very best to you all. I hope you all get what you want and need out of this year

I just wish the year had started on a better note. ‘Rocket Man’s’ ranting about nuclear buttons did not make for a very auspicious start. Trump & Rocket Man are a very toxic brew — thank heavens Brexit will probably stop our gung-ho idiots getting too involved.

[Ed P]

I forgot – the Raspi3 has a potential for graphics ‘acceleration’ – again in raspi-config advanced iirc. I’ve never used this as I play with the cheaper Pi zeroes which lack this facility. It MIGHT make Blender more usable, but I think you would probably have to set up a small server farm to get anything out of it.

[Ed P]

Depends whether you want to run the Pi headless, in which case I would install vnc viewer on your PC and enable the VNC server on the Pi. (advanced menu again).

[Ed P]

Dan, I assume you did the rtfm bit. If not a sudo raspi-config and ‘advanced’ ‘expand filesystem is essential. If this isn’t done pdq the first sudo apt-get dist upgrade will barf over everything!

[Ed P]

”

OK, so I finally bought a Rasperry Pi 3, and got it home excited to see it. Plugged in a USB KB and mouse, HDMI to the monitor, micro Sd card, and finally, a power supply. The light came and, and nothing!”

A good description of what happens when the SD card is either improperly inserted, or it does not have a valid boot sector. I suspect the latter as the best way of formatting and loading Raspbian onto the SD card is via the Windows route, and I’m sure you would not have used that!

Try a full reformat of the SD card (use GParted to zap everything then format as a Fat32 card), then follow this guide.

Unfortunately SD cards are  very ‘fragile’ and easily zapped by just pulling the power plug on the Pi – improper shutdowns are by far the most common way of zapping a Pi. I now use a USB stick for everything except a boot sector that currently has to reside on the SD card. (Something to graduate to using when you are more comfortable with the Pi)

[Ed P]

The stupidly antique systems of Banks etc often require a proof of identity  your current address and stipulate a current utility bill! I have found that when they are challenged they will happily accept your current driver license or perhaps your passport (for non-drivers). Ideally you need something with your signature as this antique country has not evolved to reach the target of an Estonian system. link

That said given this country’s track record for Government IT projects, maybe we are a long way away from such heights!

[Ed P]

The feint gray for links does not work very well if at all – it  definitely needs to stand out more for a link than it does. Ars Tecnica has moved to a black theme, you might like to try pinching ideas from them!

[Ed P]

Glad you sorted it out ok. I have to be very careful with external cables and making sure they are ‘trunked’ as the bleeding grey tree rats commonly known as squirrels love to nibble on all exposed cables.

[Ed P]

A minor critique on ‘style’. I find the dense black bars that separate the posts draws my eyes too much. Good to have an obvious separator, but it may look better in a less dense colour (dark grey, dark navy or stippled?). On the opposite tack the light green on green ‘search here’ text is almost invisible to my eyes. Forum Index is a little better but not much – white text might be better.

[Ed P]

“Brussels is probably the worst place to get the experience of Belgium,”

+1 — and outside the main train station (Gare du Nord) can be fairly dangerous – it is not the safest place in town at all!  A middle aged friend of ours was mugged and her handbag taken. The police apparently were not too sympathetic as apparently it is a well known red-light/drug/illegal immigrant area.

[Ed P]

The phone should have intelligent charge rate and over-charge protection and will be OK.

I think Lee was referring to the battery pack itself. The very cheap packs can be a bit of a menace. Just put your hand on the pack – warm is fine but painfully hot is not! Over-heating CAN take place both on charging and discharging.

The other caution is NOT to leave the power bank on charge when not in use. Charge it up and only recharge it when needed and you are around

[Ed P]

Just a caution, without knowing more about the battery just charge, disconnect then use. Some batteries allow the phone or whatever to remain connected, many more do not have the ability to charge while connected to a phone.

[Ed P]

For future reference it would have been ‘easier’ if you had just moved your ‘Home’ partition. See article.

Unfortunately a soft-link cobble does not cover the situation where the word processor has been set up to use a specific directory. Try looking at the programs that cause problems and see if you can change the default ‘save’ directory.

 

[Ed P]

Oh – must be carpy Cinnamon, it is a standard feature on Mate. You will have to use the + in Cinnamon to ‘enhance’ the context menu to get it. Link

I’m glad I use Mate – this is a totally carp way of getting at the fundamental commands!

[Ed P]

I’m not certain I really understand your problem. Try right-clicking on any folder you have copied to your data drive.  You should see an option to ‘make link’. Click on that, and you can now drag this ‘link to’ to wherever you want to have it. If you right-click on this link you can also rename it to whatever pleases you. You can of course delete this link if you put it in the wrong place.

[Ed P]

Good luck with Blender! It is one of those 3D programs you either ‘get’ or you don’t. I’m afraid I am in the latter camp but I know that Dan is now competent in using it. That said, maybe it is possible to use the templates without knowing the rest of Blender – there are a LOT of free/low cost Blender models available.e.g.  link

However unless you are competent like Dan, I’d recommend Googling for low-poly Blender meshes, as the article implies some clean-up is required if you want to avoid really tiny folds!

[Ed P]

If you grab hold of something like Foam Clay it would be very easy to make a textured coloured (fairly tough – after a couple of weeks) surface/covering for the finished article.

[Ed P]

Ditto all the above thoughts and good wishes for yourselves and your loved ones.?

[Ed P]

If you can dig out the name you can look it up, but I’ll bet it has a 12 ohm speaker impedance.

[Ed P]

The answer to your question is YES, I did just that some while ago as I’m a tightwad plus the effects of working near high pressure steam leaks without ear defenders has caught up with me!

[Author]

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