Today was going to be about so much else, but instead I found myself mêléeing with Apple’s build system.
I have a script I’ve been using very successfully for some years that automates the build process for my CLI apps. It builds a universal binary containing both ARM64 and x86-64 code, wraps it into a macOS installer package and submits the result to Apple’s notarisation service. One command in Terminal and it’s all done, or occasionally you get an error message.
Continue readingLast year, I performed some jiggery-pokery on my headless Raspberry Pi-based HomeLab to allow my veteran Psion 3a palmtop to be used as a serial terminal for those times when SSH-ing in was not an option. The age of the 3a meant it was a sub-optimal experience, but it was usable. I recently acquired a Psion 5mx, released half a decade after the 3, and put it to the same task.
The experience is much better, but I needed to tweak the PI-side settings to get results.
Continue readingAn interesting comment on my previous post suggests using udev rules to give connected USB-to-serial adaptors their own, unique names. It works by setting udev rules to apply a symbolic link to specific devices when they are connected.
The approach, outlined in this blog post, works at the command line. This got me thinking: can I do the same in code?
Continue readingRecent work connecting old mobile devices — the Psion Series 3a and the Amstrad NC100 — to my Mac caused me to run into an issue with the script I use to determine the Unix device path of the USB-to-serial adaptor I use to talk to these gadgets. Long story short: I ended up converting a Z Shell function into a Swift CLI tool — and adding Linux support into the bargain.
I decided to upgrade my Raspberry Pi 4 homelab server to the Raspberry Pi 5. I took the opportunity to upgrade the storage from a 64GB USB drive to Raspberry PI’s M.2 PCIe Hat and a 256GB SSD. This begged a question: how to replicate the three partitions on the USB drive — boot, root and home — on the SSD, especially with larger partition sizes? Here’s what I did.
I’d like to introduce you to Depot, the new name for an expanded version of the Raspberry Pi RP2040-based adaptor I launched last year as cli2c. Why the name change? In addition to I²C, the firmware and the client-side code that interacts with it, now supports 1-Wire, and more buses will be supported soon.
A one-time colleague of mine recently put me onto Tailscale, a rather nifty product that allows you to wrangle all of your computers, phones and more into a single, secure and Internet-spanning virtual private network (VPN). I decided to give it a try and I’m very impressed with its performance and ease-of-use — the latter very important for someone like me who’s not a network guru.
I don’t quite know how I missed this, but I’m guessing plenty of Pi users might have missed it too so here it is. If you’re tired of the Raspbian desktop’s too, too laggy mouse performance, there’s a very easy cure. Poor mouse responsivity was the only thing preventing me from using the Raspbian desktop on a regular basis. Here’s how to fix it.
I regularly use ls -la to list directory contents on my Raspberry Pi. I often use ls -lah to also display hidden files. This week I wondered if there was a way to use either of these ls options by default. Well, there is.
Better late than never. An edited version of this review appeared in The Register in August 2014. I intended to reproduce the original here, but never got round to it. At long last – and a tad late now the Pi 2 is out, of course – here for the record…
You might think that were you a purveyor of a nifty compact computer selling by the millions, you’d consider two years after the debut of your first offering that it was high time you tempted back buyers with a go-faster, more capacious and shinier model. Heck, Apple and others don’t even wait that long: they upgrade products year in, year out.
smittytone messes with micros 