Weatherman: weather from command line

I have found a nice piece of software that can provide current weather data and nice forecast for 7 days from command line. It is the Weatherman and it is a bash script which uses data from the WeatherBug.com. Of course it uses external program (the curl) for the actual download of the data.

The use is very simple:

weatherman -x budapest,hungary                    

Extended Forecast for budapest, Hungary

TUE       2 C  50% Chance of Light Snow    -2 C  windy
WED       1 C  Mostly Cloudy               -2 C  Mostly Cloudy
THU       4 C  30% Chance of Frozen Mix    -1 C  50% Chance of Rain
FRI       4 C  Rain                        -1 C  Mostly Cloudy
SAT       6 C  Partly Cloudy               -1 C  Rain
SUN       6 C  Rain                         0 C  windy
MON       9 C  Partly Cloudy

Data provided by WeatherBug.com

If the -x is not used then the current situation is shown:

Current Conditions for budapest, Hungary
Reported by Budapest (Ferihegy) @ Mar 25, 2013 9:30 PM

Temp: -2 C
Today: 50% Chance of Light Snow
Tonight: windy

High: 2 C          Wind Speed: NNE 13    Rain: 0.00mm
Low: -2 C          Gust: E 29            Rain/Month: 0.00mm
Feels Like: -6 C   Avg Wind: NNE 13      Sunrise: 5:36 AM
Humidity: 100%     Pressure: 1007.12mb   Sunset: 6:02 PM
Dew Point: -2 C                          Moonphase: Full

Data provided by WeatherBug.com

One can save the default site with the -S parameter. An it is possible to customize the output (the details can be found in the manual page).

I think that it’s a very nice tool.

Czech trains vs Ben NanoNote WiFi

I only have used the WiFi connection on the Ostrava-Prague railway so far. There are three companies but I have personal experience only with tho of them.

The setup for Czech Railways:

iwconfig eth0 mode Managed
iwconfig eth0 essid CDWiFi

echo "nameserver `udhcpc |grep dns |grep server |cut -d' ' -f5`">/etc/resolv.conf

The last line is needed to fix DNS problems on my setup (it may be unnecessary on your).

The setup for the RegioJet:

iwconfig eth0 mode Managed
iwconfig eth0 essid ZLUTY
echo "nameserver `udhcpc |grep dns |grep server |cut -d' ' -f5`">/etc/resolv.conf


Of course you have to have the WiFi card for your Ben to be able use these settings…

Ben NanoNote news: DOSBox, ubbctl

As you may noticed, there are several new pieces of software available for the Ben NanoNote:

• A tool for easier work with the UBB expansion card – the ubbctrl. Also a library for this purpose is available.
• The DOSBox (a DOS operating system emulator: it might be little slow but it still can be useful for old software and games). Also some native (non-DOS) games are available from the same source. Unfortunately my OpenWRT install is too old to be able to run it – may I have to update it?

Ben NanoNote VGA output attempt

I have tried to solder the UBB-VGA card.

Probably due to my soldering incompetence the result is not good: I can see (an imperfect) 640×480 or 800×600 testing image. I will need to investigate what I’m doing wrong.

Phone update

I received today an update for my Openmoko phone: a brand new GTA04 update set from the Golden Delicious Computers

I put the things to the original Neo Freerunner case so the phone still looks the same.

At the moment I have a working phone (I can call and receive calls) with the QtMoko Linux installed. I’m going to test the WiFI, GPS and more.

Modern desktops :-(

I use an Atom-based desktop computer as my desktop at work. It’s not too bad: it is relatively small and quiet and when it was new it was also pretty fast (it was about 2 year ago). From the beginning I have using the Ubuntu with its default desktop on this machine. And there is a problem: from the Unity times it have became slower and slower.

I also tried the Gnome Shell and the results are the same – it is unacceptably slow. Opening of a new window or switching to other desk requires lots of time. One of the reasons is probably the limited 3D power of my machine (but the Nautilus is also terribly slow, too).

There are also other annoyances (both bugs and unwanted features) in both mentioned environments.

I don’t have time to experiment with other modern environments. So I decided to use something that works. The FVWM.

Actually I have using the FVWM for long time (for about 12 years). I stopped using it at work before many years and I used the GNOME 2 because it looks better and it was easily usable for my colleagues (but I home I always have used the FVWM). So I just copied my .fvwm2rc file to the machine and started to use it… even the Nautilus is now faster.

P.S. The screenshot is not from that computer. It was actually taken before some time at home. But thinks looks very similar on both computers.

Raspberry Pi

There is a hype about this thing and probably there is a bunch of users with unrealistic expectations (at least here in Central Europe – I have find many offers of second hand Pis on local auctions server).

So I got one. With a Debian port (called Rapsbian) it is very good for connecting of my Ben NanoNote to the Internet, for sharing of USB sticks with computers without USB ports and it can also run software which I can’t or don’t want to install on other machines (the Octave or the OpenSCAD, for example). It is powerful enough for that so I am happy and satisfied user

There are also other uses for the Pi which I may explore in future, of course.

IP Messenger

Thanks to a discussion on the Nekochan.net I have found that there is something called IP Messenger. It’s a program for sending of short messages (and files). It requires no server and it is probably meant for internal networks.

It is interesting that there are clients/clones for many platforms (including Gtk+ annd Qt ports) and it is quite small and fast. I don’t plan to use it often but it looks like a nice tool.

P.S. The screenshot shows the Motif clone (just created by “geo” from the Nekochan.net) which work also on SGI computers (it canbe compiled for other systems, including Linux ones, too).

3D printing…

Well, I have got a 3D printer. I have the RepRap Huxley one (the smallest RepRap printer).

It takes me more than two weeks of building and of finding of my mistakes… but now it prints!

!11-PDP eht ni deppart m’I !pleH

Well, I just have tried to compile and run of my code on a real PDP-11 computer. Sander Reiche has been so kind to make public acces to his MicroPDP-11/83 computer with 2.11BSD UNIX (it’s the real UNIX, you know?)

I have had problems with telnet access (telnet port is mostly blocked in networks around me) so I have had to use the simh emulator to try my code. It is mostly written from scratch (but it reuses some parts from my MicroDef) because C compiler on 2.11BSD only supports the old K&R syntax of the language (of course…). The program is of course mostly non-interactve and produces only textual outputs.

But at the end I has been able to connect to the PDP and recompile and run my code on the real hardware.

If you are interested, the code is on usual place.

By the way, the code can be compiled also for DOS platforms (and of course it compiles and runs on any Linux). So I can enjoy it on my HP 95LX or on my Ben NanoNote (but I can run a bit more advanced MicroDef on the Ben).