Get control of your cellular data usage for savings and better utilization of carrier services

Steps to Cellular Data Savings

• Get an unlocked decent cell phone that meets your needs
• Get a sim card for one of the top three * (pay for what you need only) providers:

Google Fi 

Consumer Cellular

Ting (one I use)

• Read and follow these free and mostly comprehensive recommendations from Ting...

Ting cut your data free e-book

Do more with your smartphone without paying more for mobile data

How to save data – Six tips to save data and money

Six (more) simple tips to save money on smartphone mobile data

All those links are pretty much generic to any provider even though they are thoughtfully provided by Ting. Yes it is a lot to take in but we live in a complex world don't we.

* per Consumer Reports

Virtual 5AD European Tour (Glen Shulfer "Following the 5th Armored Division Trek" videos in order)

Part 1 - Utah Beach

Part 2 - Utah Beach Villages

Part 3 - Normandy Hedgerows

Part 4 - Utah to Coutances

Part 5 - Avranches to Lemans

Part 6 - Lemans to Versailles

Part 7 - Castle at Sedan, France

Part 8 - 5th Amored Division Monument in Luxembourg

Part 9 - Stolzembourg to Wallendorf

Sorry part 10 is somehow missing.

Part 11 - Tribute To My Dad ~ Hurtgen Forest Final

Disabling my latest anti-feature in lubuntu 16.04

Goto: System Tools->Settings->Display

Turn the awful "Sticky edges" switch to a non-default of "off" then hit apply. Problem solved!

Automated muting - Android Nougat (7.1.1)

Up until very recently I've always enjoyed others' discomfort when they forgot to mute their mobile device in a public settings where electronic intrusions are frowned upon, you know like church or a lecture hall or a movie theater. The laws of averages or karma finally caught up to me and I got bit by this modern annoyance this week. I used the knee jerk reaction, there is an app for that right? Not so fast cliche-man. Turns out after loading 2 of those silly things and wrestling for quite a little while with poorly written application screens I decided neither one was meeting my needs. Uninstall and Uninstall. Then I started digging into the sound settings of my phone Android 7.1.1 (Nougat) OS, Lo and behold...

settings -> sound -> do not disturb -> automatic rules

Here you can add as many time framed rules as you like. My needs are pretty simple, I just have a couple of recurring weekly times where I want to set DND and vibrate notifications only. Here is a screen shot of one of them:

Notes: 1) You can set it to recur based on day of week for any or all of the seven weekdays 2) start and end times for DND period. 3) DND style: Priority notifications only, Alarm notifications only, or Total Silence (not sure how useful the first two are to most folks but they are there if you want to investigate... doctors on call maybe? I am guessing at a potential use case here). 4) Alarm overriding end-time maybe for those that want an alarm sent first to kill the "DND notification firewall" and then sender follows with actual voice or text call maybe? Again, not real sure what real world use of this setting is... feel free to enlighten me in the comments.

One final note of interest here: I also discovered you don't need to try and slide the volume down with the touch screen or hold the volume down button. Doing it with the volume down key means waiting for the auto-repeat to kick in and slowly reduce the volume to vibrate while the annoying advertising electronic "music" in my case fades away like a bad sound effect in a B movie. Android already has a single touch mute if you know the secret handshake...

1) power up device and unlock screen
2) volume down once only
3) touch the bell graphic on the left of the volume slider.... boom muted.

This single touch mute has been around since at least android nougat (5.1) BTW.

Fixing google cloud print issues + ubuntu (google classic printers)

Step 1...

sudo cps-auth

copy paste URL into your browser on GCP server

Step 2...

journalctl -xe

examine log to ensure all is well with GCP daemon

NOTES:

Sad to say but Google in their wisdom, or is it greed, has decided to kick "Google Cloud Print" to the curb at the end of calendar year 2020.

Never fear sports fans (and linux folks too!), these folks have ridden to our rescue with a pretty much fully functional replacement for GCP.... www.papercut.com (the mobility print product)

Beautify already correct xml content with easy vi/vim spell...

Need to edit out nodes from massive computer generated xml files that don't feature formatting for human eyes in the interest of preventing early onset blindness? Use this handy vi trick (requires xmllint be installed)...

:%!xmllint --format %

presto human friendly formatting for monolithic xml files with no indenting or newlines etc.

Before....

and voila....

If this throws an error on ubuntu (indicating not installed), install libxml2-utils and all will be well.

Disabling the touch pad on HP chromebook butterfly running linux

I  despise track pads.
I use a wireless USB mouse instead so....

1. Determine track pad device id as follows from command line...

    $ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    id=2 [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              id=4 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech K520                            id=9 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech M325                            id=10 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech M310/M310t                      id=11 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Cypress APA Trackpad (cyapa)            id=15 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                    id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard              id=5 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            id=6 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                id=7 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            id=8 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP Truevision HD: HP Truevision          id=12 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            id=13 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Logitech K520                            id=14 [slave

Note the (id 15) Cypress APA Trackpad and
also note my (id 10) add on logitech m325 USB wireless mouse.

Also, you may have to install xinput package if not already installed on

your system. Google installing for your particular system.

Now use a suitable text editor (like vi) to create some bash scripts as follows:

     

2. ~/bin/trackpaddown

     containing:

     #!/bin/bash
   
     xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 0

3. ~/bin/trackpadup

    containing:

   #!/bin/bash

   xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 1

4. chmod 755 /bin/trackpad*

5. From command prompt issue trackpaddown to disable the on board trackpad or trackpadup to reenable the builtin trackpad device.

6. To automate this at lubuntu startup...

7. Create this directory and file...

    mkdir /home/login/scripts

    containing....

    touch /home/login/scripts/start-up.sh

    #!/bin/bash

    ~/bin/trackpaddown

    don't forget this...

    chmod 755 /home/login/scripts/start-up.sh

    Note that "login" in the paths above (item 7) are to be specific to your login !

update:  (12/3/2018) I've noticed more weird focus jumping in chrome and I just checked with:

xinput --list --short

and discovered an additional still active
 "Cypress APA Trackpad (cyapa)             id=13 [slave  pointer  (2)]"
 line in the output so I went back and revised the trackpaddown script to read thusly...

#!/bin/bash

xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 0
xinput set-prop 13 "Device Enabled" 0

Now the focus jumping issues are gone.... finally. Hooray!

 

update:  (10/31/2020) Today I discovered the disabling of device thirteen had somehow automagically changed to device id 14 rendering my script inoperable. Had to edit and run it manually to disable the trackpad. It is always something isn't it?