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Ubuntu Studio widget icons

The application icons in the toolbar along the top of the screen are specified in the .desktop files in the Hone/.local/share/plasma_icons folder. An absolute path is not needed as long as an icon file exists with the application name in, e.g. the /usr/share/pixmaps folder.

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Connect to a NAS in Ubuntu Studio 20.10

I had to do the following to connect to a D-Link DNS320L network drive after an update to Ubuntu Studio 20.10 (prior to the update the drive was discovered and mounted automatically in Dolphin).

  • Add this to the [global] section in /etc/samba/smb.conf:
client min protocol = NT1
  • Add a vers=1.0 option to fstab, so the entry in /etc/fstab is:
//192.168.0.99/Volume_1 /mnt/raid-lounge cifs vers=1.0,guest,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8 0 0

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Installing nVidia driver and CUDA toolit for GeForce GTX1050 Ti in Ubuntu Studio 20.10

CUDA allows the GPU on the graphics card to be used for general computing.

System info:

Installation instructions here: https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-linux/index.html

But then I found these instructions and followed them: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1288672/how-do-you-install-cuda-11-on-ubuntu-20-10-and-verify-the-installation

I didn’t do the verification step at the end, but after a reboot following installation I can now select CUDA as the Cycles render device in Blender.

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Side tables

1. American cherry boards

american cherry boards

2. Wood cut list

cut list

3. Thicknessing the boards

thicknessing

4. Ripping the legs

5. Using a jig to cut the legs to length

6. Unshaped legs, cut to length

7. Shaping the legs with a round-over cutter on the router table

8. Shapely legs

9. Routing the leg mortises

10. Tidying the mortises

11. Cutting the side tenons

12. Legs and side aprons

13. Machining the end mortices

14. Shaping the edges of the top with an ogee cutter

15. Gluing the legs

16. Oiling the top, first coat

17. Marking the positions of the top clamps

18. Completed tables

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Duplicating a WordPress site locally

Use the Snap Creek Duplicator plugin. The plugin generates a zip file and an installer.php script. First, delete all the files and folders in the local WordPress root folder. Then copy the zip file and the installer script to this folder, and browse to installer.php. Click ‘next’ a few times, enter the database details, done.

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Midi with Ardour on Linux

Here’s how to get Ardour set up so that the DAW can control a MIDI synthesizer. I’m using Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS, Ardour 5.12.0.

  • Start Jack (I use QjackCtl).
  • In a terminal, type

a2jmidid -j default

a2jmidid is a bridge between the ALSA MIDI system and JACK.

  • Start Qsynth (a front-end to the fluidsynth MIDI synthesizer) and make sure a soundfont is loaded.
  • In the QjackCtl MIDI connections tab, connect the Output Port ‘midi_out’ of the MIDI track in Ardour to the Input Port a2j ‘FLUID Synth’.
  • In QjackCtl Audio tab, make sure that the qsynth left and right channels are connected either to a system audio output (for listening) or to an Ardour audio track (for recording).

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A DIY reflow oven

A Raspberry Pi with an Adafruit MAX31855 thermocouple interface board and a solid-state relay is used to control the temperature profile in an oven for reflow surface-mount soldering. The software running on the Raspberry Pi is here: https://github.com/apollo-ng/picoReflow. The instructions in the README.md file in the picoReflow project are good, with one modification needed: to auto-start on power-up, the reflow script in lib/init needs “#! /bin/sh” on the first line of the file, not line 12 as given.

I set my Raspberry Pi with a static IP address of 192.168.0.222, so the address to browse to see the oven interface is 192.168.0.222:8081.

The oven used is an Argos Cookworks 20L 1380W model with top and bottom heaters. The heaters are connected in parallel. Extra insulation is added around the top and sides of the oven chassis and in the door. The seams are sealed with high-temperature putty. Some cross-bars in the rack are removed to reduce thermal mass.

The unmodified oven
Dismantled
Resistance of bottom elements
Door insulation
Complete: gold reflective tape covers seams and glass surface of door
Rear label
Resistance of top elements (two in series)
Sealing the joints
Internal wiring