Unit 14: My Raspberry Pi Future Projects

For this semester we dabbled with creating a LAMP server on both a virtual machine on the computer and a Raspberry PI (optional). Now that class is weeks from completion I thought it might be interesting to think about the things I can do with my Raspberry Pi.

Game Console

Of course I could make a game console out of my Raspberry Pi. On Life Hacker website it gives perfect step by step instructions for installing software called RetroPie. By simple erasing the current information on my Micro SD chip and imaging RetoPie on instead I can turn the Raspberry Pi into an old school video game machine. I've already purchased some SNES UBS Controller to give it a try in a couple weeks.

Home Media Center

I can turn my Raspberry Pi into a media center. Since I already have a Apple TV I’m not sure this is really what I want to use it for, but it’s an option. With the OpenELEC software I can run Xbox Media Center from my Pi and from what I’ve read and watched on YouTube, it runs cable TV and videos in the home network fast and in High Definition. As I said before, I do already have a way to stream HD video on my Television, but this would be great for the job down the road if I need it.

Creating a Drone

I've been wanting a drone for recording film in the air for over a year now. This is a perfectly logical project if I want to learn a bit more code and create a drone with the Raspberry PI. I know for a fact that there are multiple sites on the web that give step by step instruction for the build (Example). I think the big thing that’s important to me is that the Drone can lift a camera with it. So even if the Raspberry Pi is smart enough to fly, I still need a HD camera connected.

There are tons of other idea for things to do with your Raspberry pi. I personally like these links:

Ping Bin

Gear Burn

I have tons of projects just waiting for my graduation in December. I thought my list was filled with things to do, but with the Raspberry PI I have gained more projects to play with during all that time I used to spend studying and working on assignments.

Unit 13: Hello, World

Earlier in the year I read the book called Homeland by Cory Doctorow.  It’s the sequel to his more popular book Little Brother. In Homeland the main character has to deal with a huge torrent full of government documents that the government doesn't want the world to see. It’s a Techie kind of thriller and I would say that these books are directed at nerdy people and teens. It’s about question authority and about why we let other people make rules for the way we live. They are very interesting reads and I totally suggest them to all of my library teens.

In Homeland there is an awesome moment where the main character is building and programming a website for a politician. The book then goes on to talk about the awesomeness of writing code. The idea of creating something from nothing and then executing it and seeing what you've created in action. The “HelloWorld” code that most computer language lesson books teach is a perfect example of this. ‘Hello World’ is instant gratification that you've created something worth seeing (even if it’s a little text on a web browser written in JavaScript).

I personally love creating things and I defiantly would love to learn more about C++ and graphical based game design. Currently at my job I am working on learning how to get an App published in the Apple store using software that lets you design and upload it to the Apple store (GameSalad). This is great if you want to rely on a 3rd party, but I want to learn how to do it from scratch too.

I think it’s great that we live in a world with such a mass of openly available information on learning to do just about anything. The only time where really need to pay for any of that education is if we want to get that information in binded form. I’m graduating after this semester and I can’t wait to start playing with learning game design as a hobby. This class was really great to get my juices going in that direction.

Unit 11: Can't Wait to Use it!

One thing that I have really liked about this semester and this class specifically is the real world use of what we've been doing this for the past 11 weeks. Instead of so many classes that I've had where we learned a lot of philosophy on the LIS profession, this class has given as a hands-on technical look at how library databases from work. Don't get me wrong. I think a lot of the theory that I have learned in the past two years will be very helpful for communicating with other people in the LIS profession, but there is something special about learning something that you can take with you to work and actually do something with if given the computer access.

         

When I learned that we were going to be making our own LAMP server, I was very excited and couldn't wait to order the Raspberry Pi to set up. Being a somewhat technical person, with some background in coding but not a lot of background in hardware this has been a nice refreshing way of learning how to use and set up a library system.

Six years ago I helped open my first library. But when it came to opening the library on the library computer system end, I really didn't have anything to do with it. Everything that had to do with setting up the library OPAC server went to the library technician, and I'm sure that he probably knows most of the things that were learning in this class. I'm proud to say that now I'm excited about the idea of setting up a system that I know the ins and outs of the back end.

I realize that we have one third of our class left and I can't wait to see where this goes and the great hands on experiences we have left. I also have to admit I’m excited to figure out what I’m going to do with my Raspberry Pi. I’m figuring I will make a video game system with it, but who knows, there are a ton of different possibilities.

Unit 10: Getting My Hands Dirty

Since last week was mostly conceptual, I was really excited to finally get into actually doing some coding. I love getting my hands dirty, figuratively of course. I have to admit that I really didn't have a hard time with any of this weeks work. Instead a lot of it was a great way of reflecting on the things that we've learned throughout the semester. 

It was really neat to rehash learning about creating users and security levels just like we did about Linux, but this time in MySQL. I really did enjoy the coursework video and Joshua’s choice usernames for his sample accounts. There's something about having both a teachers pet and that best friend that will mess everything up as a great example for showing everyone how everything can get screwed up by letting someone you don't trust into your system.

Next I got to rehash all of what we learned about installing Webmin. When I first used Webmin, I was very unimpressed with it weeks ago. But it was really cool to be able to create tables and databases very fast and with ease. If I wanted to add a ton data really fast, I think I would use Webmin to do it, because for me it’s the quickest way of doing.  Of course everyone has their own personal choice for how they like to enter data and I'm sure many people would disagree with my favorite being Webmin.

Next installing, installing and installing was the name of the game, and it brought me back to when we first created our LAMP server. This time we installed phpMyAdmin. This software is definitely my choice for testing MySQL Queries. I think the fact that you can simply copy and paste from one window to another and then apply and see what happens it a lot easier than creating a query on the command line and continually getting errors until you get a working product. I'm assuming that's why I was told that this is probably the preferable program for using MySQL and creating a databases.

Last but definitely not least we made a text file and turned it into a table. It's really nice to know that there are so many different ways to do the same thing. I think that was the point of this week. This week we learned the versatility of being able to create databases and tables for MySQL in so many different manners.

To end my exciting week it was very cool to create my very own queries made of all kinds of different verbiage and testing them out.  Sometimes my code worked and sometimes it took forever to figure out what I was doing wrong. All in all this was a very exciting week, and I love learning and creating something and then being able to look back and see the architecture.

Unit 9: Something to Figure Out

I have to admit, that I had a really hard time with this project. I always thought of myself as a very adaptive person. If you put a piece of software in front of me I can learn it if I have enough instruction. When it came to creating an Entity Relationship Diagram I felt like I hit a wall of logic what wasn’t kicking in. Maybe it has to do with my hands on approach, but I just had a really hard time rapping my head around relationships. It was almost impossible to figure it out myself so I searched the internet to find an example close to my database idea and work from there.

So my idea is to make an image database that is based on different types of humor. In reality I really just need a digital asset database example and I found one after searching for an hour or so at Database Answers. There I finally found what I was looking for.

Here an asset has a relationship with its creators, events and format types. I’m not sure what the events are for, but the other two made sense. The format type is connected to two additional tables (recording devices and publishing devise), which is a bit too complicated for my database. 

I was able to take this Entity Relationship Diagram and make my own. It’s not perfect by any means, but I’m proud of it because it was hard to wrap my mind around how it would be written.

Other than that, this week’s concepts weren't that bad. I can see how many would have an issue with Normalization, but after watching MySQL Database Normalization on YouTube the concept finally clicked for me.

Unit 8: Is it still true today, yep?

I loved reading ‘Life is what happens to you when you'remaking other plans’, written by Michael Schuyler in 2000. It was a blast from the past to know even back in 2000 people who were making decisions on technology knew little to anything about the technology itself. I will admit that understanding technology has become easier and easier, but I was still surprised that my now fiancé, then girlfriend knew little to nothing about computers. She wanted them just work to and to do what she wanted. She had no interested on how they worked, “That’s what the Best Buy people are for (Geek Squad).”

Again this article was written back in 2000, and I would cringe if a big city library system didn’t have some IT professionals in the room when talking about the future technology plan for a city-wide system, but what about smaller systems or  a one library town.  Some libraries can’t even afford to have an IT person on staff and then need to talk about their future in technology needs. I’d love to dismiss this article and say, it’s a great satire of the past, but in fact it’s probably something that still happens today in the building next door, when we’re not paying attention.

Sure there are words everyone knows now, like, internet and website. Small businesses go out of business because of their lack of web presence. Library need to always staff in front of the crowd and therefore need to keep a loud technology presence in the room at all staff meetings.

I am currently working on a LSTA grant for a program I call ‘The Videogame Blogging Station’. Without going into a lot of specifics I want to get a powerful computer with numerous recording abilities for tweens and teens to play games while recording themselves and for them to make games reviews and video blogs. This will help them build communication skills, video editing skills and self-esteem, plus they get to play video games, everyone wins.  In the grant I will need to talk about in many pages my technology needs, but mostly I will need to talk about outcomes. What’s interesting is the outcome has nothing to do with the actual technology needs.

I brought that all up because technology forecasting can easily get clouded by non-technology based information. We want to maintain a high-speed internet. We want to set up places for staff to save all of their work so they can use it anywhere in the city, etc. These things are great, but you’ll need a tech guy in the room to help you figure out how this is going to happen and the cost. Cost especially is important in future casting.

I really loved Schuyler article, partially for its humor, but even more because these issues still exist at some level all over the place today.

Unit 7: XML is so fancy!

I have to admit to learning a little XML about fifteen years ago. Back when I just graduated with my undergrad, my dad wanted to take a JavaScript course at the community college and asked if I wanted to take it with him. During the class my dad created a slide show webpage with JavaScript that let the user flip through pictures, using html buttons links to the script. The JavaScript used an XML page for the picture information. Back then I was working on getting rid of a bunch of my stuff to move out of living with my parents so I transferred his idea to a website I called Bargain Monkey’s Garage. This was a time period where eBay wasn't that big yet, so just think if I had made the site learn to take money from people and actually took time to finish it I might be a millionaire.

So this week I instantly went to the w3schools website to refresh my memory on XML. I watched part of Professors Fulton’s YouTube video and realized it was a great class for XML information made as a PowerPoint presentation (Beyond MARC: Metadata Standards for Digital Resources). I also watched the suggested video called, “Just Enough XML to Survive”, it was a very brief overview of XML, but the video quality was lacking. I could hard read the screen and when I made it larger I felt like I was just looking at fuzz.

I then moved to making my XML file and we were instructed to make a XML files with a root element with three data elements with sub-elements within. It was supposed to be about images so I figured I would make one for real. I used free picture from Deviant Art with random searches. 

I picked a picture of a turtle, a banana and a double rainbow and saved off the files for potential use in the future. I also got their creation date and artist data and added it to the sub-elements. I really enjoyed making the XML file and hope we use it in the upcoming weeks in class.

Unit 6: My Webpage History

To be honest I have been playing with HTML since the early days of the web (depending on your definition of course). In 1994 I was a freshman in high school and we had Netscape on our computers. Some of my classmates and I decided to learn HTML and made a very simple website. This was before CSS or Web 2.0 so interactivity was links and email but it was pretty awesome back then.

Since then I have tinkered with web design but haven’t really honed my skills. In IRLS 504 we were asked to create a simple website and that was cake (I made this while it was begin taught). It wasn’t until IRLS 575 User Interface and Website Design that I got a good refresher and update of web design. The class used the website Codecademy. Our first project for the class was for us to go through all of the lessons modules on the website and show proof of passing them. I got a great refresher and got to update my skills with CSS.

There was one thing I learned more than anything else in that IRLS 575 and that is there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to code. You don’t need to write webpages from scratch after you know how to write them. Instead of always starting from scratch you can copy and paste code and you reuse or build off of someone else’s (as long as it is open source). I’ve created two final projects from what I learned in that class. Each of them uses the same template but uses them differently. 

Feel free to check them out:

IRLS 520 Ethics for Library and Library Professionals

IRLS 554 Diverse Cultures, Communities & Libraries

Unit 5: Taking in the Information

When it comes to learning I know I am an audio-visual learner. If possible I always want to watch a video and next down the list I would prefer instructions with pictures or an audio file to add to plain text. I am dyslexic and I know that I literally see things a bit different than everyone else. I am constantly switching words out of order when I type comments in a discussion so I need to pre-write all of my dialogue in a text editor with grammar checks to bring my eyes in alignment of the words in check. I also turn all of my readings in class into audio files that I can read along with the writings. I do this with a piece of software called Natural Reader. Much of what we get written is available in a text format or I need to change it to that so I can use my software. Doing the OCR text to audio conversion makes the information easier to digest, just like adding pictures to an instruction manual.

Tech Talk

So of all of the reading and videos we had this we I really enjoyed the videos. I have to admit I didn't get much of out the Ethernet cable video (GetConnected - Tech Talk - Ethernet Cables and Router Speed) At least for right now the information about different types of Ethernet cables is pretty useless for me. Down the road if I’m networking my house if might come in useful.

The History of Ethernet

The video about the creation of Ethernet narrated by Bob Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet) was very interesting. I love listening to stories about the creation of technology.  He was the first person in history asked to network a bunch of computer together, which is pretty cool. (The History of Ethernet) I found the titling of Ethernet to be very interesting. It came for the 19^th century and the name was taken from the luminiferous ether  which is the medium between the sun and the earth.

Warriors of the Internet

Lastly it was nice to watch a video about how the internet works and the story is a very interesting narrative. “People and machinery are working together, realizing a dream.” ‘Warriors of the Net’ makes its tale epic when its story takes place in such a small speck of existence. On the other hand, everything that happened between a computer across the vast internet is important to each and every user who sets out to send or load data. It also put this week’s lecture into perspective for me.

Unit 4: New Users

Today was a New User installation extravaganza! In just a few hours I created new users and groups in Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu  Server, and with Webmin. I had a rough start. I was required to change the default Shell directory for new users from /bin/sh to /bin/bash. We were give the command line $ sudo useradd -D -s /bin/bash. Unfortunately it didn’t work. I tried to do it multiple times and even logged out and back on to see if it that would help.

So I did what anyone who really wants to solve a mystery in the command line crime world, I search the web for clues. Everyone mostly pointed out that what I was trying to use in my command was correct. This was not helping so I dove deeper and found a new solution. I could change the useradd file itself. The webpage warned me about the possibility of messing up the system, so I copied the file before entering vi (text editor). The file was quite easy to change all of the changeable attributes were grey. I changed the SHELL=/bin/sh to SHELL=/bin/bash and saved it. I type $ sudo useradd -D and the Shell default was now updated. The mystery was solved and all is well with the world.

My next adventures were a lot easier in comparison to my bash and bin murder mystery. I simply opened Ubuntu desktop and did a search for user. A User panel became available and as soon as I unlocked the window I was allowed to create new users. It was a pretty self-explanatory process. Not much was customizable, but I could decide if the new users were an administrator or not. I was next asked to install Gnome software which would add an additional User and Groups application. In it I could create and delete users and groups. Also I had a lot more options when it came to access for the users and groups I created. Between the two in Ubuntu desktop app’s I think the Gnome addition was a bit more to my liking. I like to being able to do more than most general software normally lets you. I was a bit surprised that the Gnome software didn’t come with Ubuntu initially, but I guess not that many people need those kind of options and those who do can download it.

Lastly I used Webmin. It pretty much looked like router software if you log onto it from a web browser. Using it was pretty self-explanatory and in no time I created both a group and a user I named after my dog Buddy.

This was a fun day and it was nice to play around with so many different applications to do seemly the same thing with GUI and CLI. The start was a bit bumpy, but I’ve noticed that it always is. Just like when you’re about to leave shore with a row boats, someone has to give the boat one last push before the water takes over and the boat takes full float. 

Unit 3: Text Editors using Ubuntu Server

This week in class I got to play around with vi and nano on my virtual Ubuntu Server. I have to admit, the vitutor is a bit overwhelming. It is seven lessons long and after a while you begin to forget previous lessons because of the lesson length. After I finished adventuring in the exciting tutorials I searched on Google for a cheat sheet.(Click here if you would like to see cheat sheet) I know I will not remember most of the terms so I wanted a quick reference guide. Here is the one I came up with.

We were asked to change two documents in the system and I decided if I spent over an hour doing the vi tutorial I should probably use it to do the changes in one. We were told to edit the sources.list file. In the file I needed to delete hash marks and spaces that made it possible for the partner repository to be available. After all of the time I spend learning vi all I need to do was place my cursor above the hash marks and spaces and press the x button. The only part that got confusing was when it was time to save. I mixed up force quitting with quitting and saving. So when I went back into vi I had to redo everything and now I got an error when I tried to quit and save. I has to use the manual save command :w and then I was able to quit with no problem.

In the nano text editor I was asked to add a few lines to the .bashrc system file. Nano is a super simple text editor and I had no problem at all using the arrow keys to move to the bottom of the file and add two line of code that created an alias that tells the system when I type ls or dir to printed out both the regular files and the hidden ones.

For the current assignments neither of the text editors were very hard to use. I

stick with the belief that whatever software gets the job done quicker is the one I prefer to use. I can see vi being faster in the case of manipulating already existent files of code, but to creating something from scratch I definitely think for me personally the nano text editor would be my choice.

Unit 2: Installing and Using Ubuntu

Today I install Ubuntu, my first taste of working with Linix on my VMware workstation (virtual machine). The installation was very easy. The YouTube video on how to install Ubuntu to VMware was excellent and I didn't have any issues along the way.

Ubuntu’s GUI desktop is very easy to adapt to. It’s almost a cross between a mac and windows. Instead of the quick task bar on the bottom or buttons generated from a start menu it has its task bar on the left side. Like a mac it also has a system menu always available on the top of the screen. For my assignments I was asked to:

Install software

I love games so I looked in the Ubuntu store and browsed for a free game to install and play. I found a game the called Freedriod RPG and clicked install. I was prompted for my user passwords and the installation directly began. After installing the game I tried to play it and it was fun, but part of the games screen was cut off. I tried to fix the games resolution in the settings but instead broke the game. Now if I click on the game the VM just turns black. It’s a lesson to be careful playing with settings you don’t understand. I had to restart the virtual machine just to get out of the program. Needless to say I’m not playing that game anymore, but I may try to download a different one in the future.

Create Three Documents (One from each of the of freeware office suite)

LibreOffice Writer was just like using word, including the red underlined misspelled word automatic spell check. Just like in word if you right-click on the red underlined word a list of possible correctly spelled words are given. I wrote some nonsense and saved the file in the documents folder (I called the document Jim).

LibreOffice Calc was just like using Excel. I played with the spread sheet software and tried out a bunch of elements I knew from using Excel including auto numbering and creating read outs (using the sum feature). I called this file Spreadsheet in the documents folder.

LibreOffice Impress was pretty much identical to Powerpoint. I create two slides playing with the feature. Since I hadn’t downloaded or added any pictures to the VM I took a screen shot and added it to the picture folder so I could add a picture to the slide show. My presentation was just gibberish and I saved the file as Dogs.

As I went through the Tutorials it was apparent that the Linux the tutorials were about and Ubuntu have many different placements when it deals with location and sometimes file name. The guided tour referred to a file called ‘vmlinuz’ being in the boot directory, when in Ubuntu it’s in the main directory. The system configuration file either has a different name or it’s not located in the etc/ directory. I like how the tutorials started showing some of the really neat tricks you can use in the command line. I especially liked using ‘*’ and ‘?’ to replace names and files types. My favorite command prompt command was: mv *.o?? unit2 (moving all of the office files with any name to the unit2 folder).

Unit 1: Ubuntu’s Interface

Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system. This week I both downloaded the desktop and server ISO’s for Ubuntu. I also got a basic introduction to Linux from my virtual Learning Center. We were asked to search through Ubuntu’s ‘New to Ubuntu’ forum to find something interesting about the software. At first I was having issues finding interesting things because a lot of this section is about issues people are having with the software. On the other hand hearing about issues is a great way about hearing about some of the features you would never have thought of.
So apparently Ubuntu’s interface was made to look like a Mac interface. In the forum "New to Ubuntu Forum" a user was asking about the accessibility of changing Ubuntu’s appearance.

 I have been working with both macs and pcs for years now and I definitely think that’s an interesting choice. But based on simplicity I can see that making sense. I’m merely talking about the appearance and not the system behind the scene. Continuing my read I found that Ubuntu can look like any type of operating software appearance you want. It merely involves clanging the GUI (graphic user interface) feature in the software. I did a couple image searches and found this to be totally true. 

Here’s Ubuntu’s GUI set to look like Windows 8:

Or Windows 7:

Needless to say I thought this was something interesting because appearance is a very important feature especially because the appearance may be based on how you use your computer.