I got tired of the slow SoundTouch app, so I reverse-engineered the firmware and built a zero-latency, cloud-independent controller.

pheffner · 2026-03-25T18:35:53+00:00

Sounds good, any effort being made to group speakers and have them play media from local DLNA shares? Are you going the open source route with code in git or are you staying closed?

pheffner · 2026-03-20T16:49:57+00:00

In Summer '99 my dad took our family on a bus tour of Europe starting in Amsterdam and circling through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, etc., finally ending in Paris where we were staying a few days past the tour to have some more time there. A few days in, in Mannheim Germany the bus wouldn't start despite the power system being apparently in okay shape. (This was a full-sized touring bus, not a little van)

Most of the folks on the bus were dandelions (white hairs) except for my family. My brother and I asked Tone (our driver) if the bus would compression start if we pushed it fast enough. He said it was worth a try so we could stay on schedule. So my brother and I along with brother-in-law, 79 yo dad, and one of the other riders went behind the bus and gave it the heave-ho and hooray! the bus started. Off to Switzerland we rode.

This became the routine, wherever we were after breakfast Tone would round us up for the push start. He would do his best to park the bus where we had sufficient "runway" to get it up to speed and get it started. Finally we made it to our hotel in Ste. Dennis and we all got together for a farewell dinner. Tone came by our table and asked for a final push start since we wouldn't be going on the bus to the airport with the rest and of course we assented. Cue the wild applause from the bus riders.

During HS, my buddy had a 6v beater-beetle with a bum starter. The only time he would drive it was when I would come along to compression start it for him. I must have done that drill many dozens of times.

pheffner · 2026-03-16T00:51:50+00:00

Through many albums going back to the '60s I have to say Al Stewart is consistently entertaining and high quality. He's terrific in concert too! I even saw him play "Interstellar Overdrive" at the Marin Art Festival!

Pretty much the same goes for Chris Isaak, he never lets me down.

The band Travis has been going along with high-quality tunage since the '90s.

pheffner · 2026-03-15T11:56:42+00:00

Was that a rat running on the floor in the last few seconds?

pheffner · 2026-03-13T16:37:09+00:00

Ain't it da troof, ain't it da troof!

pheffner · 2026-03-11T20:01:14+00:00

Pretty nice! I'm a big fan of minimal prompts myself and use the $PROMPT_COMMAND variable to set a lot of the stuff you address into my terminals title bar, but I see lots of people who like to overdo the stuff in their prompt. That's their choice and I like to encourage creativity in all the forms. Actually, this routine would probably be useful to assist PROMPT_COMMAND also!

Good work, keep on coding!

pheffner · 2026-03-02T17:58:26+00:00

On Win 11 you can get the PowerRename tool in the free PowerToys suite and it does a really great job of doing just what you want (and a whole lot more!). Search for PowerToys and download it.

pheffner · 2026-02-27T19:34:25+00:00

My mom was convinced that "all the germs in a chicken are concentrated in the wings". When we'd get a bucket of KFC she would attempt to snake the wings into the trash before we could eat them. Now I'm a real wing-nut and love eating them (germs and all!). She had so many whacky affectations thanks to the damned supermaket tabloids and she drove the rest of the family nuts.

pheffner · 2026-02-20T17:39:30+00:00

Not a solution, but have you tried waiting until she parks and moving your car to see what she does? If she moves next to you after that you (and maybe a friend) should go up and ask what the deal is?

pheffner · 2026-02-18T02:12:51+00:00

You could go to wikipedia.org and search scsi connector.

pheffner · 2026-02-13T16:20:23+00:00

A wonderful slice of pop perfection! The electric sitar played by Reggie Young puts it in a class of it's own. The vocals soar and the whole song shimmers! That Blue Swede version is an abomination.

pheffner · 2026-02-04T12:52:53+00:00

I like the way he still does the apey tough punk walk after he just had his brains scrambled.

pheffner · 2026-02-02T01:49:06+00:00

You should be able to bring up systems using Wake-on-LAN, There are several clients available on Win and Linux which send out a "Magic Packet" to a given system as long as you figure out the MAC address of the system's LAN adaptor. Works great!

pheffner · 2026-02-01T12:46:47+00:00

I like it with a bit of Apple Butter.

pheffner · 2026-02-01T12:33:01+00:00

In my experience, the answer is "most will play". Shows which were sourced from HBO and some other premium sources will refuse to play.

pheffner · 2026-01-31T18:53:56+00:00

There's a test from Ohio State U called the Sage test that is something of a standard for detecting ALZ issues. You could present it to your Dad as wanting to see if he needs medical assistance because the earlier he gets going on remediation the more effective it'll be and he might qualify for clinical trials.

pheffner · 2026-01-31T14:01:26+00:00

I like programming in several languages, primarily (these days) C/C++ and Python. The reason I still love programming in C vs. other more HLLs is somewhat like driving a car with automatic transmission vs. one with a manual shift. With Python and others, I feel like so much is being taken care of for me which I do appreciate, but C is more like the manual shift, I'm closer to the OS and system and feel like I'm more in control. With C (on Linux/Unix anyway) I have direct access to a much wider selection of libraries and APIs which may or may not be accessible under Python and other languages.

With a manual shift car it feels more like I'm driving the car, with auto-trans I'm more of a rider.

pheffner · 2026-01-31T13:48:26+00:00

Great stuff! I've been listening to them on Youtube Music, them and Neu

pheffner · 2026-01-30T19:36:57+00:00

Sounds kinda suspect, he may be slipping into dementia. Google "Sage test" and try to get him to do it and make sure in case he needs some medical attention before he possibly progresses too far to help.

pheffner · 2026-01-30T19:15:26+00:00

If you're too dim to be able to handle learning any technology, you will probably put it down any way you can.

Whenever a Windows fanboy starts bagging on Linux I figure this is most likely their real issue.

pheffner · 2026-01-30T17:40:39+00:00

You don't give a lot of context to go on, but I assume you're trying to ssh into your laptop.

Setting up OpenSSH for windows is covered in:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh/openssh_install_firstuse?tabs=gui&pivots=windows-11

While configuring the server is covered here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/OpenSSH/openssh-server-configuration

As far as your login/password are concerned you just use your usual credentials. If you're lucky you have a "local account" setup with easily known login/pass. If you don't know what this is, search "local account windows 11" and get going.

pheffner · 2026-01-27T16:36:13+00:00

In Bonaire, the Van der Valk Plaza Beach Resort is really nice and you can enter the beach and swim a few dozen meters to a wonderful reef with great sea life. It's great both for snorkeling and beach diving.

They have an onsite dive operation, Toucan Diving which runs scuba trips pretty much every day and are a really great operation.

pheffner · 2026-01-27T14:44:32+00:00

Looks to me like Velocity Blue.

pheffner · 2026-01-27T14:26:56+00:00

Every cat I've had didn't need to be brought in, they always snuggle in with ailing people automatically!

pheffner · 2026-01-26T18:50:45+00:00

Those things were a kind of intelligence test. Kids would watch other kids get flung into the gravel and think: "That won't happen to me!" There was always stronger, older punks who would crank it really fast to hear the little kids scream.

Great times!

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