My children want to have some of the songs they listen on the radio in their MP3s.
This is a no-brainer. After they find the videos they want in YouTube, I put all the URLs in a file ('bajar.txt') and can get all the MP3 files with the following command.
youtube-dl -a bajar.txt -x --audio-format mp3 -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s'
But the second step is a bit more fun. One of the MP3s is wrong and it plays the songs a bit slower than it should. Instead of buying a new one, I just speed up the MP3 files in the computer before uploading them to the player. This script will just get all the *mp3 files in a directory, speed them up according to the SP factor, and copy them to the directory 'emma_mp3s', ready to upload to my daughter's player (modifying the IFS variable allows having white spaces in the file names)
#!/bin/bash
# mp3speed.sh # Adapted from https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1259851
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
FILES="*.mp3"
mkdir -p emma_mp3s
for f in $FILES
do
AR=96k
SP=1.08897 # Speed up: ini_length * (1/speedup) = final_length
echo Encoding $f
mplayer -af scaletempo -speed $SP $f -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:fast:waveheader:file=$f.wav
ffmpeg -i $f.wav -acodec libmp3lame -ab $AR emma_mp3s/$f
rm $f.wav
done
IFS=$SAVEIFS
Saturday, 9 December 2017
Sunday, 19 November 2017
Parental control in Linux
Having small children, I needed to find a way to control how much time they spent daily using the computer.
The page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Parental_Control suggests timekpr and timoutd but both seem to be obsolete, since I couldn't make them work properly.
In the end, the solution that fits me is to use both PAM and Workrave.
PAM is easy to configure and the children cannot stop it, but Workrave is not meant as a parental control software, so by default it shows a window, which the children could easily close in order to avoid the prescribed time limit. In order to fix this, I just make Workrave not to show in the Icon Tray, and just to open as a regular window, which then I hide from the taskbar with wmctrl. I create the following minimal script, which I configure to start up automatically with each session, so Workrave starts in the background, and the children cannot easily close it (when they learn a bit more about Linux they will easily figure out how to stop it, but I still have a few years until that happens!).
#!/bin/bash
/usr/sbin/workrave --sm-client-disable &
sleep 1
wmctrl -r "Workrave" -b add,skip_taskbar
When they reach the daily limit, Workrave will show them a warning and give them 30 seconds before the session is blocked (I would like to give them perhaps 5 minutes before the session is blocked, but for the moment I didn't figure out how to change this).
The Workrave configuration I used can be seen in the following images:
The page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Parental_Control suggests timekpr and timoutd but both seem to be obsolete, since I couldn't make them work properly.
In the end, the solution that fits me is to use both PAM and Workrave.
- PAM (http://www.linux-pam.org/) "is a suite of shared libraries that enable the local system administrator to choose how applications authenticate users", and there is a module called pam_time that "restricts access to a system and or specific applications at various times of the day and on specific days". So, with this I can limit access to the computer to only, for example, the weekends.
- Workrave (http://www.workrave.org/). Workrave is originally designed to assist "in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit."
PAM is easy to configure and the children cannot stop it, but Workrave is not meant as a parental control software, so by default it shows a window, which the children could easily close in order to avoid the prescribed time limit. In order to fix this, I just make Workrave not to show in the Icon Tray, and just to open as a regular window, which then I hide from the taskbar with wmctrl. I create the following minimal script, which I configure to start up automatically with each session, so Workrave starts in the background, and the children cannot easily close it (when they learn a bit more about Linux they will easily figure out how to stop it, but I still have a few years until that happens!).
#!/bin/bash
/usr/sbin/workrave --sm-client-disable &
sleep 1
wmctrl -r "Workrave" -b add,skip_taskbar
When they reach the daily limit, Workrave will show them a warning and give them 30 seconds before the session is blocked (I would like to give them perhaps 5 minutes before the session is blocked, but for the moment I didn't figure out how to change this).
The Workrave configuration I used can be seen in the following images:
Friday, 17 November 2017
Emacs interface to Recoll
Lately I'm using Recoll (a desktop full-text search tool), https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/, which comes with a GUI, but it also can be used from a terminal. I wanted to be able to use it from within Emacs and I found two existing ways:
(defun ag-recoll (string directory)
"Search using ag based on the findings of recoll. Search will be done in a given DIRECTORY, and the STRING will be interpreted as concatenated by ANDs for recoll and with ORs for ag.
The idea is that when I search, for example, for 'openacc mpi', recoll will give me all the files that have those two words somewhere in the file, and ag will find lines that match any of the terms.
For the moment this is very crude, and most options to recoll and ag are hard-coded in the ag-recoll.sh script, most notably that ag will look for a maximum of 10 matches in each file to avoid huge lists with common searches."
(interactive (list (ag/read-from-minibuffer "Search string")
(read-directory-name "Directory: ")))
(setq command-string (format "%s %s %s" "/home/angelv/localhacks/ag-recoll.sh" directory string))
(setq regexp nil)
(compilation-start
command-string
#'ag-mode
`(lambda (mode-name) ,(ag/buffer-name string directory regexp))))
which uses the ag-recoll.sh script:
- helm-recoll https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-recoll
- counsel-recoll, bundled with swiper https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper
I already use Ivy/Swiper/Counsel, which is very nice, so route 1) didn't appeal much to me: I would have to install Helm just to get Emacs-Recoll interaction and perhaps suffer some problems by having Helm and Ivy together.
Route 2) was not very nice either because counsel-recoll will interactively search the database for matches and it will show in the mini-buffer the names of the files whose contents match the given search so you can quickly open them, but you can not see any context in the files around the search you are trying to do.
So I ended up writing a small functon (ag-recoll), that suits me better. I can give a number of words, which recoll will use to do a search, and then only on those files matching, I will call ag, which will create a buffer with all the places in the files where the given words match. The given buffer is a "compilation" buffer, so the lines are hyperlinks, which can be easily followed to open the file at the place of interest.
The function is as simple as:
(defun ag-recoll (string directory)
"Search using ag based on the findings of recoll. Search will be done in a given DIRECTORY, and the STRING will be interpreted as concatenated by ANDs for recoll and with ORs for ag.
The idea is that when I search, for example, for 'openacc mpi', recoll will give me all the files that have those two words somewhere in the file, and ag will find lines that match any of the terms.
For the moment this is very crude, and most options to recoll and ag are hard-coded in the ag-recoll.sh script, most notably that ag will look for a maximum of 10 matches in each file to avoid huge lists with common searches."
(interactive (list (ag/read-from-minibuffer "Search string")
(read-directory-name "Directory: ")))
(setq command-string (format "%s %s %s" "/home/angelv/localhacks/ag-recoll.sh" directory string))
(setq regexp nil)
(compilation-start
command-string
#'ag-mode
`(lambda (mode-name) ,(ag/buffer-name string directory regexp))))
which uses the ag-recoll.sh script:
#!/bin/bash
dir=$1; shift
ors=$(printf '%s|' address@hidden)
recoll -t -b $@ dir:$dir | sed -e "s/file:\/\///" | xargs -d '\n' ag --max-count 10 --group --line-number column --color --color-match 30\;43 --color-path 1\;32 --smart-case ${ors%|}
So, as an example, when I call ag-recoll with STRING 'openacc pgi' and DIRECTORY /home/angelv/Learning in my workstation, the result is like this:
where each line is a hyperlink to the corresponding match in the file and you can use the common grep-mode commands to open a file, go to the next match C-x `, etc.
This is useful already as it is, but I will try to make it more flexible (being able to pass arguments to recoll and ag, etc. [I'm a total noob with Emacs Lisp, so any suggestions on how to improve the code are very welcome].
Friday, 9 June 2017
Oxfam Trailwalker Madrid 2017
I have been a member of Oxfam for several years now, but only last summer I learnt about the Trailwalker. As you can read in their webpage:
100km in less than 32 hours and obtaining at least 1500€ in donations requires some work, so after talking with my family and convincing a group of colleagues at work and friends, we managed to set up a team around November 2016 for the Trailwalker Madrid 2017. Below is the team webpage (as per June 2017, after having finished the race and having obtained 1830€ in donations).
The Trailwalker Madrid 2017 webpage is very well organized, with loads of tips on training and fund raising. We tried to read all of it and get organized as soon as possible.
For fund raising we didn't organize any events, and mainly we just created a poster to put up at work and to distribute it via:
We also created a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/astrowalkers/), so that people could follow our training and fund raising progress.
I have to say that fund raising was more difficult than we had anticipated and full of surprises (in some cases total strangers donating large sums of money, while no money coming from people we were 'sure' would help us). In any case, at the end we managed to go well past the minimum required of 1500€ and collected for Oxfam a total of 1830€.
All the members being quite busy at work, we decided that we would train individually most of the time, but try to meet once per month to do a team session together. That would mean six training sessions together (December - May). Simone had some trips and could not join all the sessions, but he is the fittest of the group, so he was going to cope well anyway. The six training sessions were:
After all these preparations, we were quite ready for the Trailwalker, but we were always assuming that the weather was going to be hot and dry (which suits us nice, living in Tenerife). But as the race day got closer, the forecast was of rain (a lot of rain and storms), which made me quite anxious and concerned about blisters, my main issue in all the previous training days.
As it turned out, the weather was quite good throughout the race, except for some rain and hail in the first hours (there was also quite a heavy storm the following day, more or less about 30 hours after the starting time, but we managed to avoid this one completely, having finished in about 27.5 hours).
The race started on June 3rd, at 09:00. Not being a competitive race, the atmosphere was really friendly and supportive of each other. In total there were six intermediate stops, where everything was very well organized and Oxfam provided water, fruits, coffee, etc. plus physiotherapy and feet care services, and our support team was always ready to prepare us some meal or get us anything that we might need.
In total it took us some 27.5 hours to complete the 100km. Our original plan was to try and do it in 24 hours, but in the end our stops were a bit longer than planned, and towards the end we started having some serious blister issues, which forced us to go much slower. Here it is the final route (more detailed stats can be seen at: https://www.endomondo.com/users/10020566/workouts/939149852)
Some memories from the day:
Overall, this was a fantastic experience, even more when we know that all the effort we made was for a good cause. For the Trailwalker'17 edition (consisting of three races: Girona, Euskadi and Madrid), all together we were able to raise for Oxfam Intermón a total of 1059384.53€, which will be used to help improve the quality of life of many people around the world (http://trailwalker.oxfamintermon.org/en/about-trailwalker).
Well done everyone involved and many thanks to all our supporters!!
Trailwalker is the greatest team challenge of the world fight against
poverty. The challenge consists of four member teams walking 100km in
less than 32 hours. The members of the team must start together, stay
together and finish together.
The aim? To fight poverty and injustice around the world. That is why the teams commit themselves to obtain donations for Oxfam Intermón. Each contribution improves many lives, so encourage your family and friends to help.
The aim? To fight poverty and injustice around the world. That is why the teams commit themselves to obtain donations for Oxfam Intermón. Each contribution improves many lives, so encourage your family and friends to help.
[...]
Trailwalker was originally a military training exercise for the
Gurkha Regiment in Hong Kong. In 1986, it became an Oxfam event for
fundraising and since then it has grown to become one of the most
important sport challenges, held annually in different countries around
the world.
The Trailwalker Madrid 2017 webpage is very well organized, with loads of tips on training and fund raising. We tried to read all of it and get organized as soon as possible.
Fund raising
For fund raising we didn't organize any events, and mainly we just created a poster to put up at work and to distribute it via:
- e-mails to work colleagues and friends
- WhatsApp messages
- word of mouth
We also created a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/astrowalkers/), so that people could follow our training and fund raising progress.
I have to say that fund raising was more difficult than we had anticipated and full of surprises (in some cases total strangers donating large sums of money, while no money coming from people we were 'sure' would help us). In any case, at the end we managed to go well past the minimum required of 1500€ and collected for Oxfam a total of 1830€.
Training
All the members being quite busy at work, we decided that we would train individually most of the time, but try to meet once per month to do a team session together. That would mean six training sessions together (December - May). Simone had some trips and could not join all the sessions, but he is the fittest of the group, so he was going to cope well anyway. The six training sessions were:
Training 1:
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Training 2:
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Training 3:
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Training 4:
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Training 5:
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Training 6:
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Race day
After all these preparations, we were quite ready for the Trailwalker, but we were always assuming that the weather was going to be hot and dry (which suits us nice, living in Tenerife). But as the race day got closer, the forecast was of rain (a lot of rain and storms), which made me quite anxious and concerned about blisters, my main issue in all the previous training days.
As it turned out, the weather was quite good throughout the race, except for some rain and hail in the first hours (there was also quite a heavy storm the following day, more or less about 30 hours after the starting time, but we managed to avoid this one completely, having finished in about 27.5 hours).
The race started on June 3rd, at 09:00. Not being a competitive race, the atmosphere was really friendly and supportive of each other. In total there were six intermediate stops, where everything was very well organized and Oxfam provided water, fruits, coffee, etc. plus physiotherapy and feet care services, and our support team was always ready to prepare us some meal or get us anything that we might need.
In total it took us some 27.5 hours to complete the 100km. Our original plan was to try and do it in 24 hours, but in the end our stops were a bit longer than planned, and towards the end we started having some serious blister issues, which forced us to go much slower. Here it is the final route (more detailed stats can be seen at: https://www.endomondo.com/users/10020566/workouts/939149852)
Powered by Wikiloc
Some memories from the day:
Overall, this was a fantastic experience, even more when we know that all the effort we made was for a good cause. For the Trailwalker'17 edition (consisting of three races: Girona, Euskadi and Madrid), all together we were able to raise for Oxfam Intermón a total of 1059384.53€, which will be used to help improve the quality of life of many people around the world (http://trailwalker.oxfamintermon.org/en/about-trailwalker).
Well done everyone involved and many thanks to all our supporters!!
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