Long story short but…
You have a Pi3 (B+). You do an os upgrade. Your wifi become unstable and/or stops working…
Culprit is broken update. You need to rollback the upgrade for the network. This is how to do it:
Run:
sudo dpkg -i firmware-brcm80211_20161130-3+rpt3_all.deb
sudo reboot
For more information – see this link:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=249750&sid=0e48494349b8a53c664aaa761cdacbff
A cluster is used to work on distributed computing tasks. So things that need a lot of number crunching. The idea is to run many processes at the same time to make the whole run quicker. Note that often the single processes will take longer because they need to be assigned and marshaled etc (overhead) but running many at the same time makes it worth it.
A GUI , which is what your desktop is, is not suitable for this because there are many different processes that run at random times. The best way to speed up desktop is:
(the above list is not in any order)
So the short answer is “no”😊
It should be easy – take a screenshot. Well – turns out it is but it’s not exactly the latest and greatest in tools…
“Scrot” is a screen capture tool installed by default on pi os. Nice – but – it is just that – it captures the whole screen. Just press “Prt Scrn” and click – a nice picture saved in your Pictures directory. Fine, all well and good, but what if you only want the active window?
A quick google found the “Gnome Snapshot tool” (gnome-snapshot). It’s simple and effective. I allows you to capture:
How to install?
sudo apt install gnome-screenshot
Run it from the menu, place it on your desktop or change the keybindings for prt scrn.
Hint – to change keybindings – here’s a useful link to Tom’s Hardware:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-custom-keyboard-shortcuts,40215.html
Nice 🙂
The latest version of chromium on raspberry pi OS does not work for Netflix. This is because wildvine (DRM software) is broken.
There are a lot of tutorials and advice on how to get this fixed. The two most popular are to use Kodi and to get chromium media edition.
Using media players (like Kodi) seems a bit of overkill when all you want to do is watch via the browser. It’s also quite a messy way that never worked for me.
By far the easiest way I have found (and also works for Disney+ and probably anything else that uses wildvine) although Spotify is a little unpredictable is to install “pi-apps” and use that to install what you need.
It can be found here:
https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps
This little wonder also makes visual code easier an a number of other apps to install.
One thing to remember…
If you install chromium media edition, kill all other chromium processes before you start the media edition.
If you don’t then it won’t work.
Hint – you can use htop, put it into tree mode and send sighup to the root chromium process. htop is also very useful to monitor whats going on in your system. If it’s not already installed the sudo apt install htop.
Normally I don’t peel potatoes before cooking them. After all – all the good bits are in the skin. But, when the family decides it likes the new and improved mash recipe that is “fluffier” without the skins – what can I do?
3 Kg of spuds, peeled.
Seems a shame to just compost those skins.
An idea for you…
Make potato chips (aka crisps).
Put the skins in a bowl, pour in some olive oil, add salt and pepper and a bit of fresh chopped rosemary. Use your hands to make sure everything is mixed through well. Put them on a backing try and in the oven at 180 deg C for 30 minutes or so.
Take them out and leave to cool and you get some really good tasting home made chips that you know exactly what went into them. Lower fat? Maybe not but it’s olive oil so it’s healthy – right 😉
I’ve had pi’s for a long time; 2, 3, zero and now the 4. With 4Gb. Cool…
So – is it good enough to replace a desktop?
Quick answer is yes.
Longer answer is as long as you aren’t doing video editing or wanting to play 3d games and stuff that requires a lot of fast processing. For standard day to day stuff – it’s great.
I’ve set mine up with an 8Gb Transcend SD card. The pi was originally supplied with an unbranded 16Gb SD card pre-installed with latest Raspian. I hate to say the amount of time i wasted on that. It eventually loaded and trying to do anything with it was horrendous, slower than the 3b and it kept hanging…
Being the brave soul I am – I decided to use that install to move over to a small second hand SSD I had laying around. Again – the amount of time I wasted!!! Lets not go there.
Moral is:
Anyways – after a lot of messing – I am writing this using WP’s block editor in Chromium. Even starting Chromium previously on the old pi – even with a working SSD was a no go – it would just lock up. So far – this one seems great. I’ve a YouTube video playing and a couple of other windows open. And still running on just the SD card.
Sound quality out of the headphone jacks is great. It does use micro-HDMI so it’s important to not forget that or have kids who hoard cables and don’t mind you raiding their stash. Wifi speed is great as well – this is all down to the much improved architecture of the pi. more UARTs, improved USB bus and not everything going through the same bus.
Temperature wise…
This is maybe a bit of a different story. I’ve no fan on and it’s in a case. The temp is now around 70 deg C as measured by (from https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34994):
/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp
This seems a bit excessive so maybe I need to flash the firmware. I don’t really want to use a fan as this connects onto a few GPIO ports and I want to use a pi cobbler on this for doing some electronics stuff. That said – I will try it and see what it turns out like. I’ve no intention of clocking the thing so well – maybe just leave it.
It does need a 5V 3A USB C power supply. Not a biggie but maybe you will need to get one.
In short – if you are looking for a new working machine, don’t mind getting your hands dirty and aren’t wanting to do processor intensive work then you could do a lot worse than a Pi 4.
Update:
A few days later – I’m still happy with it – I’ve noticed a few issues with the wifi keeping dropping but that could be the range. I’ve also found out that I needed to do a lot of work with the SSD to get it working well. I’ve written about this in another post.
HINT – The SSD wasn’t broken – the USB/SATA interface needed an update.
I plan to use this one the coming weeks as my main machine and see how it all goes. I’ve code to write and things to build so it should get a good work out.
An early birthday present to my self – 4Gb Raspberry Pi 4B. With a case and a fan and a 3A power supply. Also – a vendor supplied 16Gb SD card preinstalled with latest raspbian. and lastly – an external USB 3.0 SSD housing.
What could possibly go wrong?
Reading the documents – it should be easy to boot from the latest version of RaspberryOS (aka Raspbian). Just download the image, un-tar, burn it to the disk, plug the disk in and boot.
Well – erm – nope.
First was the fun and games with the supplied SD card. You would think the vendor would supply an adequate, fit for purpose, unit? Nope. They must have found the nastiest, cheapest, slowest PoS they could. Booting it took for ever. Once booted – I ran the diagnostics because there is no way this can be slower than a 3b right?
Diagnostics are giving almost 50 IOPS! Wow – that fast. NOT. The limit is set at something like 400. Doubtless to say the card was not fit for purpose. But thats ok right – I plan to burn to SSD and boot from that anyways. Using the pi to do this was not the most pleasurable process. It took literally hours.
In the end (and 3 nights later) – I quit with it. I got an old card that I knew worked, flashed the latest image, booted and bang – it was there. Amazing. Even just running from the card was fast. 4Gb really makes a big difference. Chrome would run without killing the entire OS.
Next step – start again with the SSD. Burned the image – booted – nothing.
Waited – nothing.
Tried again – same thing.
Strange.
One thing I found was that it kinda worked if it went through USB 2 rather than 3. Ok – this pointed me to something else…
https://jamesachambers.com/new-raspberry-pi-4-bootloader-usb-network-boot-guide/
The need to update the firmware on the USB/SATA. Did that. Booted – almost same thing. Note – almost – when doing this sort of stuff – keep an extra eye out for things that are slightly different – it’s important.
I would love to provide the link but I’ve managed to loose that one.
Googled again – Now we find out that there is something called UAS. And it’s important. Because on some cheap units – it’s not implemented entirely cleanly. This resulted in finding out way more about the boot process than I ever really wanted to know and also editing a file in the boot directory to add an exclusion for that protocol. Downside is that it would slow my disc down a bit but it would still be way faster than SD.
So I did that.
And guess what?
It worked!
Finally, after a long time and much trying but not giving up. Nice new PiOS on a 128Gb SSD.
Well impressed.
Lessons gained:
Update…
These are useful resource links:
Jeef Geerling – pi 4 booting from SSD
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/im-booting-my-raspberry-pi-4-usb-ssd
PI4 USB boot Ubuntu:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=131&t=278791
Update firmware for JMS578:
https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-xu4/software/jms578_fw_update
How to improve speeds for PI4 USB
Making your own wine seams kinda cheap sometimes. The average bottle price is well below 1 euro per bottle in general when you are using found ingredients. Even if you buy them – it’s still relatively cheap.
WHATS THE DOWN SIDE?
Well – many home made wines don’t have grapes in them. They taste different from “normal” wine and can be cloudy or be a little unpredictable with taste. Add to that the idea that they are often made on the kitchen top or the shed and folks get a bit of a bad opinion. They are used to being sold wine as an exclusively grape based product and that the more you pay, the “better” should be the taste.
This is a shame. There is a whole world of taste experience out there to be had. Trying different fruit, vegetable, berry or herb wines expends your taste experience. It gives you more food pairing options. It even gives you more stand alone drink options. Not a beer, not a cocktail, not a spirit; a home made country wine. A chilled light peach wine on a warm summer afternoon or a heavy celery wine on a cold winters evening.
WHAT, CELERY?
You mean that sort of long green bitter thing that uses more calories to eat than it actually contains? The love or hate vegetable of salads? Like, celery?
Yup, celery. Plain, simple, green, crunchy celery. Without salt because the yeast doesn’t like salt but yes, celery.
As a little side bonus – this is a two for one show – for main course you get the wine, for. starter – you get soup. What could be better?
What could be better? The cost. It’s cheap to grow your own and even if you buy, then it tends to be not the most expensive green in the veg shop.
OK – NOW I’M INTRUIGED…
Celery wine. Slightly bitter, makes a great aperitif. Here’s the recipe…
Wash the celery and finely slice it. Put this in a large, clean pan and add the water. Bring to boil and leave it simmering until the celery is soft and the juice has been extracted. This could be 30 minutes or longer (possibly shorter). It all depends on your celery. This will make your “liquor”.
Strain the liquor into a sterilized 10l fermenting bucket or other suitably large bowl. Add the citric acid and the sugar. Stir using a sterilized stirring thing (ideally RVS or plastic) until all the sugar is dissolved. Loosely cover and leave to cool to around 21 deg C.
When cooled, tip in the yeast starter that you had made, cover and leave for 4 days.
At this point, take a hydrometer reading. This is your starting specific gravity (SG). It tells you how much sugar is dissolved in the liquor that can potentially be converted to alcohol by the yeast. In my case the SG was 1102. This give a potential of around 13.5% alcohol. Always take a starting SG and a finishing SG. Whilst is is possible to estimate the alcohol content from the recipe, during the process, fluid values may vary, sugar content of your veg or fruit can change etc.
After 4 days, give a good stir with a sterilized stirrer and put in a sterilized fermenting vessel (5l glass Demi-John), stopper with an airlock and leave to bubble until complete. Rack once, and bottle or follow your own gut on this one.
The result is an interesting aperitif wine, light and a little bitter.
When the liquor has cooled,
WAIT – YOU SAID…
Soup and whats a Yeas Starter?
SOUP…
Yup – when you make this wine – you have a lot of cooked celery left. You could just throw it out or put it in the compost or whatever. You could also make soup out of it…
Put the cooked veg in a pan with 1.5l of water, a couple of veg stock cubes and bring to boil. Stir for a little, remove from het and then blitz with/in a blender.
Makes a fantastic soup base, or even on it’s own, with a little cracked pepper and a blob of Greek yoghurt with crispy brown bread. Can be frozen.
YEAST STARTER…
If you don’t normally do this. Or are unsure of the process – this is really something that is worth doing. It gets fermentation off to a healthy start and well just do it…
Get a sterilized jam jar. Add some lukewarm water (maybe 100ml). Add a teaspoons of sugar and dissolve. Add yeast activator or nutrient at the prescribed dose (it will be written on the container) and shake. Then add your dried yeast, loosely cover and leave in a warm place for an hour. The liquid in the jar will bubble and smell a little like wine.
Why do this? Yeast comes dried.It’s in a dormant state and needs to be woken up. You can either give it the short sharp shock of being thrown into it’s work environment with no preparation OR you can be kind, give it a bit of time to wake up and acclimatize, have some breakfast and then get on with work. Which would you prefer?
Allowing the yeast to wake up and start reproducing in an ideal situation really does get it off to a good start. Your fermentation will be stronger and better. Your end product will reflect this.
AND THEN WHAT?
Well, erm, eat your soup and then wait for 6 months?
Actually, that. The soup is a bonus but don’t look gift horse in the mouth. Try and (re)use your bi-products where you can. The wine it’s self. That needs time to go to completion and then rack out before bottling. It’s worth the wait (as it is with all homemade wines)…
It’s worth the effort and time and waiting to be able to taste the fruit of your labors. Amaze friends and family with your skills.
This is a list of some of the recipes I’ve tried and some notes to go with them. It will grow over time.
A traditional drink from the South. Usig this recipe and also a bit of history.
DIY Southern Comfort
Its a simple and also not sugar heavy – which is a good thing. There is a bit of honey in it whih may or may niot be your thing but make sure to put at least some in. It’s needed.
From wiki – a little bit about the history:
“An inch of vanilla bean, about a quarter of a lemon, half of a cinnamon stick, four cloves, a few cherries, and an orange bit or two. He would let this soak for days. And right when he was ready to finish, he would add his sweetener: he liked to use honey.[9]”
This is a seriously good chocolate drink. It’s like really thick creamy chocolate milk with a big kick.
Easy to make and saves a LOT money compared to shop bought drinks. It’s not exactly low calorie and is pretty much addictive – be warned.
The recipe can be found here:
https://anitalianinmykitchen.com/chocolate-liqueur/
You have been warned 😉
http://www.oneacrevintagehome.com/homemade-pineapple-liqueur/
Simple to make and takes one month of shaking daily before sugaring and straining. The left over fruit will make for a nice ice cream topping;)
This one can be found here http://themellors.org/cooking/?p=503:
Very simple and even after only 2 weeks, it’s already starting to taste like it should. A winner.
A classic Italian liqueur. Full off lemony goodness with a kick like a mule.
Here: http://themellors.org/cooking/?p=499
If you follow the (my) instructions then not only will you get some really good limoncello, you will also get a good bit (2l -3l of lemon cordial) as well.
Ideal for Christmas and where I really learned that if the recipe says “big” pot, then use a “big” pot. There is only 600ml of vodka in this one but the fruit makes it difficult to fit.
As this was a Dutch recipe – I’ll write it here:
Wash the cranberry’s and then chop them finely. For this I used a blender but you can chop them by hand. Zest the mandarins (difficult so it’s perhaps easier to use a potato peeler than a rasp) and squeeze the juice out.
Put everything in the BIG pot, tighten the lid and then shake. Leave in a dark place for 3 weeks and shake twice daily.
When ready for bottling, remove the cinnamon stick. Use a cheesecloth to strain the liquid into a container. Then squeeze out all the moisture from the remaining fruit – you want to get as much out as you can.
The liqueur is good to drink at this point but as with most things, if you leave it a little longer, it will mature out.
Note to self – maybe the remaining fruit can be used in some way???
A request for a post about making liqueurs…
I’m no expert. I’ve made a few and I’ve been very pleased with the results. That said – I’m sure there is a lot of room for improvement and also many other ways to make delicious sweet alcoholic drinks:) So – what I do and say is only part of a large world and you need to make your own choices:)
Not because I want to put a downer on anything – it’s more about making sure you don’t poison or infect yourself…
You are dealing with alcohol, fruit and sugar. You are extracting oils and chemicals from ingredients that aren’t in the regular stream of “home cooking”. Make sure everything is clean. Make sure you sterilize any equipment and jars etc that you use. It’s true that alcohol above a certain %’age will kill (or at least stop bacteria from growing) but there is always a chance.
Now – the downer stuff is over – time for the fun to begin…
Really it’s alcohol with an infusion of fruit and or other stuff and sugar in the range 15% to 30% alcohol by volume but not always:) There are a number of exceptions to this.
Get some alcohol, get some flavor base, get some sugar, mix in various ratios and leave for a while. Alcohol is a string solvent and so will extract all the oils and taste from the flavor base. The sugar helps make the thing a little more balanced for taste. You don’t even have to leave the thing for years to improve the taste (although this can help with some).
Usually cold, either as an aperitif or a digestive. Or whenever you want 😉 Mix with other things for cocktails.
Ok – so what about the alcohol thing – what can I use?
Typically, you use a neutral tasting alcohol as a base. So, vodka is a good start. Use as good a quality as you can afford and always where possible, a minimum of 40% ABV. It maybe that for somethings you can only get 35% (Dutch Jenever is an example). Thats ok – just be aware that if you add water to it – you need to add not so much.
But of course – you can also use whiskey, cognac or whatever as a base. It’s your choice.
Many liqueurs are good drunk from the freezer. If there is lower than say 30% ABV in there, the liquid will begin to freeze and separate out. You will end up with slush puppie. Maybe not a bad thing but probably not whats intended. So – be careful with adding water.
Another reason is that if you have solid fruits in there – the alcohol needs to be above a certain concentration to prevent nasties growing. Does that mean more is better? Nah – not always. Too much and it will be undrinkable for most. Also, to be fair, quite dangerous as you won’t know just what you are drinking and that can lead to “issues”.
Generally, yes. But I’m not a lawyer – so -check your own locations laws. Making liqueurs should be not problem. What generally upsets governments and agencies is making your own pure alcohol (aka moonshining). Many countries won’t allow the use of even personal stills. It maybe legal to sell them but to use them for alcohol; nope.
There is a grey area here as many little stills are used to also concentrate oils from herbs (and other things).
General kitchen stuff in other words. Nothing special. But if it says BIG jars – use big ones. As a rule of thumb – a jar should be one and a half to two times the volume of liquid you but in.
Why? Because when you add fruit and sugar – these take up room as well. And you need a bit of space in the jar so you can shake it up properly.
Start off with using recipes and instructions from books and/or internet. Stick with them before you start messing around. Then, once you have experience, you can start tweaking and creating your own. Just like any other thing. Get a bit of experience first and then expand.
Well – other than the obvious “drink it”, you can use it as a basis for cocktails, as an ingredient for cooking, a present or any one of a number of other things.
Many online stores have fancy bottles for putting your finished product in. Label it and put a fancy ribbon in it; Bingo. A great personalized birthday present.
Send an email or leave a comment below – lets see what we can do:)
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