Managing Configuration files with etckeeper

Managing your /etc configuration files using version control is a good practice. Trust me, someday this will save your skin.

In the post I'll share setup notes for using etckeeper with git version control. You can install etckeeper and git using system package manager.

# Initialize etckeeper
sudo etckeeper init 

# Commit all your /etc/ configurations into git
sudo etckeeper commit '...enable etckeeper...'

# Check the commit history of file 
$ sudo git log /etc/passwd
commit 322b63ede6cf3073a8f48a883b49d5b3b60fdfb9
Author: arky <arky@localhost.localdomain>
Date:   Wed Mar 5 07:11:47 2014 +0000

    ...enable etckeeper...

There is very little etckeeper documentation out there. You can learn more from this dated Ubuntu Server 10.04 etckeeper wiki page.

So-Fi Sunrizer Solar bag with flexible panels

Robert Kaiser walks in with his Sunrizer bag and says "Here is what you need for Africa". This designer bag sports a flexible solar panel and provides USB connections to charge your devices while you carry. Stylish, Waterproof and rugged enough to hold your laptop, mobile phones, music player and charger cables. Love this bag but at €179.00 EUR it's expensive.

Checkout out www.So-fi.com for more solar products.

Using Archivemail to pruning Mailman archives

The mailman server I maintain for a local non-profit is running out of disk space.Time for some spring cleaning. Decided to archive all mailing-list archives older than 2 years. Grabbed the nifty Archivemail python program and installed with 'python setup.py'.

The archivemail is a tool for archiving and compressing old email in mailboxes. It moves messages older than the specified number of days to a separate mbox format mailbox that is compressed with gzip.

Don't forget to back up mailman mbox files before you start pruning mailman archives.

# Prune mbox file
$ cd /var/lib/mailman/archives/private
$ archivemail --days=550 name-of-list/list.mbox 

# Wipe and rebuild archive
$ cd /usr/lib/mailman
$ bin/arch --wipe 

Sugar Learning Platform

Last weekend I attended the Vietnam Tech Conference 2014 in Hanoi. The event brought together educators from across south east asia to learn and share about the use of technology within the classroom.

My talk introduced the Sugar learning platform that was developed for OLPC laptops. Designed from the ground up especially for children. Sugar User Interfaces moves away from traditional 'desktop' metaphor. It makes collaborative learning a fun experience. There are numerous activities that promotes self-learning.

What is Sugar on a stick?

Sugar on a Stick is a Fedora® Spin Live USB operating system featuring the award-winning Sugar Learning Platform and designed to fit on an ordinary USB thumbdrive ("stick").

It will run on any recent x86-based computer that can boot from a USB stick (check the BIOS settings if it doesn't work straight away). This includes most Windows and Linux PCs and x86 Macs.

You can use SoaS to demo Sugar almost anywhere without disturbing the contents of the computer you use, and if people like what they see, you can install Sugar on a Stick to their hard drives or other sticks from the demo stick.

Learn more about Sugar on a stick here.

WakaWaka Compact Solar Power Charger and Light

Growing up in rural India, we experienced severe shortage of electricity. I spent many nights finishing home work by the light of the gas lantern. The lack of electricity adversely effect education and the overall development of the country. The WakaWaka project ('Shine Bright' in Swahili) aims to bring low-cost solar-powered LED lamps to developing countries. The project was successfully funded on Kickstarter crowdfunding site and went into production two weeks later.

What is WakaWaka Power?

A sturdy, highly efficient, sustainable, solar-powered LED lamp. The WakaWaka Light is as much an indispensable product for those in the West, as it is the solution for the 1.3 billion people living without electricity. It is twice as efficient as any other solar lamp on the market and is making a significant impact around the world.

SamyGO: Modding Samsung TV

SamyGO project provides custom firmware for Samsung TV's. If you have any LED, LCD and Plasma TV models made by Samsung from 2009(Check the compatible TV list). Follow the instructions to load the custom firmware using serial interface.

SamyGO Demo

The project enables you to unleash the full power of the Smart TV. In this hack, you can watch movies from your local network media server running Samba/dlna using built-in Wifi connection.

Pebble SDK 2.0 Developer Preview

Pebble smartphone SDK 2.0 will be released later this year. It introduces new build tools, support for accelerometer, data logging, persistent storage, JavaScript and Web API(Geolocation, Local Storage) API. Developers can distribute apps on Peeble Appstore for free.

Pebble SDK 2.0 Announcement

Check out the technical talk for full details. Grab the latest Pebble SDK 2.0 Beta7 and use iOS/Android 4.0 mobile device to flash your Pebble with latest Beta firmware.

You can view this presentation slides on slideshare