Recent Posts

21

Table-top Games / Re: Rival Troops

« Last post by Dragon on November 21, 2023, 17:26:57 »

I recently introduced Rival Troops to my friend Rick. He is a non-gamer, meaning that he will play board games with me, but I don't think he'd ever seek them out on his own. He did catch onto the game quickly though, as I had hoped, and had no problem disrupting some of my potential campsites. Final score: I had 67 points; Rick had 44.

22

Table-top Games / Re: Sushi Go Party!

« Last post by Dragon on November 20, 2023, 23:02:48 »

Once again, we played Sushi Go Party! Anna and Grace both enjoy the game. This time we played using the original Sushi Go set of cards. Grace still won by 3 points. I got second place and Anna was close behind. Grace made the most of the Chopsticks during the game. Although Anna and I both played Chopsticks at different points in the game, Grace was the only one that used them, and multiple times at that. In the end, all 3 of us had 3 Pudding cards, so the Dessert scoring didn't change the standing.

23

Table-top Games / Sushi Go Party!

« Last post by Dragon on November 19, 2023, 23:05:25 »

Today, amongst a megahaul of games purchased today, we got Sushi Go Party! I've played Sushi Go with friends before, but never owned it before. This deluxe set of the game adds different cards and a menu/score board. My 12-year old daughter saw Sushi Go Party! in the stack of game and asked if we could play it. She said it looked cute.

Anna, Grace, and I played the game using the My First Meal menu. Grace won! I thought I was doing pretty well, staying close to Grace, but she beat me by 12 points. In the end, even Anna passed me by with the points from desserts.

The second game, Anna dropped out, so it was just a two-player game. Grace was very confident about her skills and decided to use a custom menu since she wanted to have the "peas" because they looked cute on the box. We found the cards and saw that it was the edamame, but unfortunate that card says it's for 3-6 players, so she picked some other stuff. We ended up with all new menu items compared to the first game. All 3 rounds were pretty close for us, but I won by 12 points this game.

24

Blogs / Re: Raspberry Pi and Python

« Last post by Dragon on November 17, 2023, 23:29:21 »

Still having trouble getting scikit-learn installed, I noticed by running top that the system was running out of memory while trying to get the dependencies installed. I suspected that running straight from the command console instead of using the GUI desktop might help. I used sudo raspi-config to change the boot config and rebooted to the console. After that, I ran the install commands individually for the dependencies before trying to install scikit.

Code: [Select]

pip3 install -U numpy
pip3 install -U joblib
pip3 install -U threadpoolctl
pip3 install -U scipy
pip3 install -U scikit-learn

Finally... it all installed successfully... supposedly. To test, according to https://pypi.org/project/scikit-learn/, I also installed pytest, pip3 install -U pytest. Unfortunately, running pytest sklearn still failed.

https://scikit-learn.org/stable/install.html has more installation and troubleshooting steps that I'll need to go through.

25

Blogs / Re: Raspberry Pi and Python

« Last post by Dragon on November 15, 2023, 20:54:39 »

As a follow up to my previous comment, the USB adapter for Wi-Fi is working now.

Continuing into the 2nd chapter of Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers, I've found that I needed to install scikit-learn to have the necessary datasets. While trying to install scikit-learn on my RPI the other day, which was taking a very long time, the system went to sleep. The screen would go black after about 10 minutes and I was thinking it might be helpful to adjust the power settings so it wouldn't do that. The GUI doesn't have anything that I could find to change it, but I did find some command line stuff that worked without installing anything more.

I found there are two settings that have to be changed as either one of them will blank the screen in ten minutes under the default settings.
set screen saver timeout to zero:

xset s 0

and set dpms (EnergyStar) to disabled:

xset -dpms

This way I haven't needed to install anything (no screensaver). It was confusing because I'd tried both items, but it wasn't until I learned they both were blanking the screen at ten minutes that I saw what was going on.
As this has tested out OK, the next step for me is to put them into an autostart routine.
ps Verify your settings with

xset q

26

Blogs / Re: HP Victus - Bad Omen

« Last post by Dragon on November 08, 2023, 20:08:15 »

I have a laptop for work that charges via USB, which is handy because a powered docking station can be used to connect multiple monitors along with charging the HP Probook laptop without needing a separate power cord. That lead me to another discovery about my HP Victus - USB-C charging is NOT SUPPORTED. There's a little lightning bolt icon next to the USB-C port, and I was able to try it out with a powered docking station with USB-C, only to discover that it doesn't charge the laptop at all. Apparently the charging feature that it has is just to provide a little bit of charge to other small devices, such as a phone, even when the laptop is powered off. So... there's another thing to consider for this laptop and future purchases.

27

General Discussions / Re: 3D Printer Projects

« Last post by Dragon on November 05, 2023, 21:24:20 »

Since the wind-up car turned out so well... I was thinking this 5-speed gear box would be a neat one to put together.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6280779

28

General Discussions / Re: 3D Printer Projects

« Last post by Dragon on November 05, 2023, 15:03:19 »

The Raspberry Pi Case turned out nicely using the Clear Green and Gold filament, colors inspired by The Legend Of Zelda games. The logo piece didn't fit snuggly into the lid though, so I did need to glue it. Also, that piece isn't the same thickness as the top, so it will either be raised on the box, which is how I chose to do it, or it will take more space inside. I was concerned that the box wouldn't close tightly if I had it inside more because of how close the opening is to the network port.  The top and bottom fit tightly enough together though that I've gone without screws for now. It doesn't snap together, but it holds well just against the RPI itself.

29

Blogs / Re: Raspberry Pi and Python

« Last post by Dragon on November 01, 2023, 18:05:27 »

Looks like the Ralink firmware isn't the right thing for this hardware. Running a different command, lsusb, I see [Zydas ZD12118] at the end of the line for the Belkin Components, so I'm going to try installing the zd1211 firmware, which is actually the same one mentioned on page 56 in the book I got.

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install firmware-zd1211

30

Blogs / Re: Raspberry Pi and Python

« Last post by Dragon on October 25, 2023, 22:49:50 »

I saw on the previously mentioned website that the drivers were available at http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-ralink_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb, unfortunately, the file doesn't exist there anymore. However, I did take a look in
http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/ and found a more recent Ralink file: firmware-ralink_20190114-2_all.deb. Also, https://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/ does have the firmware-ralink_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb and 5 others that appear to be in between those.