Categories
Books

RIP RBDigital. Boo to the Libby App

Libraries Ireland recently switched from the RBDigital app that my wife loved to an app called Libby. She reads magazines on a very old iPad so she made the reluctant switch to Libby.

It was a nightmare. By accident she selected the county library rather than the city library and we couldn’t see where to change library. I reinstalled it as that seemed to be the easiest way of fixing that issue.

Once into the app she entered her details and attempted to read a magazine. Unfortunately it was so slow it was frustrating. I realise this iPad is old, but the RBDigital app was quick and responsive on the device. The Libby app is not. Pages load slowly, the whole device lags when Libby is running. Downloading magazines is very slow.

We had the same experience on a Kindle Fire Android tablet, but it was marginally faster. From snail’s pace to sloth’s pace. What the hell is the app written in? Some high level framework that needs the latest hardware to run it?

Then I saw you can use their website, libbyapp.com instead. Firefox on the Android tablet, and Chrome on the iPad were a lot more responsive. While it was still slow to load magazines it was usable. Libby even makes it easy to add a new device.

Their website works just fine in Chrome on my ageing iPad, and the immersive view of Firefox on the Android tablet looks even better so I must see about putting Firefox on the iPad too.

Categories
C64

Yes, it is at home

My Commodore 64 is in my home office. How did they know?

Categories
C64 demoscene

Mahna Mahna

There were some great demos, music and graphics released at Transmission64 2021 yesterday but one of my favourite demos was Mahna Mahna by Mahna Mahna. You can watch it above but if you have a C64 emulator or real hardware then grab it from CSDb and watch it there. So fun. I love it.

I loved the PETSCII King Tut too. An amazing piece of work when you realise it was made from the characters available on the C64 keyboard and not drawn pixel by pixel.

Find more of the releases on this page at the Transmission64 website but before I leave you here’s a selection of the stunning graphics entered in the competition this year.

The entire stream of the Transmission64 demoparty is available on Twitch.

Categories
blogging General

Google remembers they own Feedburner

Google sent out an email today to Feedburner users with the ominous subject, “Upcoming changes to Feedburner”.

It’s Google so my first thought was that they were about to shut it down. No, it’s not quite that bad, but they are shutting down parts of the service.

Starting in July, we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure. This will keep the product up and running for all users, but it also means that we will be turning down most non-core feed management features, including email subscriptions, at that time.

This blog and my photoblog each have email subscribers through Feedburner. If you are reading this through one of those emails come visit the site and scroll to the end of the page. There’s a “Subscribe via Email” form you can use to join the 9,145 others who read whatever it is I post here. (How is that number so large? Is that accurate? Reply here please if you are one of them. It’s WordPress stuff you’re looking for isn’t it? Sorry, I haven’t been posting much about that in a long time!)

If you’re reading this through a Feedburner URL and I know there are a few of you out there it might be safer to use https://odd.blog/feed/ instead. You know, just in case Google kills it off. I know it’s unlike them to do that but you never know.

Google Takeout doesn’t include a “Feedburner” directory either. I must export the Feedburner stats and take a look at them. Here’s the tiny graph they show you. Look at that in 2010. Whoah! It’s all been downhill since then. If you’re still reading this blog since then, thank you. I really appreciate your attention since you now have Twitter and Facebook to distract you.

Categories
tv

A real life Goldbergs episode

Categories
C64

Cat Vibing To Levan Polkka

Remember that cat vibing to Levan Polkka?

Well, C64 demo coder Logiker created a C64 version and it’s awesome! It’s a one part #PETSCII production and a funny addition to the #demoscene. You can find it in the usual places but if you just want to watch it look here.

Categories
Life

The 90s weren’t that long ago

A screenshot of Reddit from 2012

Hopefully this post will still be online when the 90s people are nostalgic about are the 2090s.

Categories
Music

Keep Yourself Alive (Long Lost Re-Take)

I just heard this edit of Queen’s Keep Yourself Alive for the first time and I love it. It’s longer than the original and definitely worth listening to if you know the original.

Apparently it was recorded in 1975 as a possible radio edit according to this post but it was finally released in 1991 by Hollywood Records.

This acetate first was thought to be from circa 1972. But some years ago in an interview Brian confirmed that in 1975 it was re-recorded as new version for a possibly new release. Interestingly, the “long” track is refered to as a “long lost retake” on the hollywood version.

I’d love to know what other material is in the Queen vaults waiting to be heard..

Categories
Linux

Pi-hole missing SQLite3

Pi-Hole is an ad blocker you run on a Raspberry Pi on your local network to provide ad blocking services to all the devices in your home.

A new install of Pi-Hole

When installed normally it uses Lighttpd but I already had Apache2 on my Raspberry Pi. There are a few threads and this doc about migrating to Apache2 but none of them mention SQLite3.

If you don’t have that module installed the ad blocking part will still work but the web admin will show an almost empty page. Look in /var/log/apache2/error.log and you’ll see an error like this:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'SQLite3' not found in /var/www/html/admin/scripts/pi-hole/php/database.php

It’s easy to install the SQLite3 mod for PHP:

sudo apt install php-sqlite3

Then restart Apache2

sudo service apache2 restart

I’ve had Pi-Hole installed for years but I think I ran into the read-only problem mentioned here too. As stated in the doc above, the fix is simple. Add the Apache user to the pihole group. That will allow you to update various settings from the web admin.

sudo usermod -a -G pihole www-data

Categories
Games

Dyson Sphere Program

Looking back toward my “home” moon and the gas giant around which both moons orbit. Part of my main bus visible in the foreground.

Build machines to automate building more machines to automate researching new technologies to build more machines and eventually build a Dyson Sphere around the local sun. Rinse and repeat in a new solar system.

There’s so much in this early access game but even at this early stage I can easily recommend Dyson Sphere Program if you are a fan of Factorio or Satisfactory. I got bored of the former and never played the latter. DSP hits the spot for me.

For help check out the related Steam community, the DSP subreddit or any of the numerous Youtube videos on the game.