Attention!

Pandemic Pastime: Walking and Picking Up Trash

It’s been far too long since I posted to this blog; I guess I’ve been busy? Nah, not any more than usual, but during the COVID-19 pandemic I have doubled my efforts to get out and walk in the fresh air whenever possible. I’m thankful for my small “scurry” – that’s the term for a collective of squirrels – who not only take walks with me around Cherry Lake, but all around town.

→ Home Automation ∞

During the COVID-19 pandemic I decided, while working endlessly from my home office, to resurect the hanging bird feeder outside my office window. I like having the birds visit, but I’ve noticed one problem… starlings! They are cranky, bully bastards and chase all the welcome visitors away, if I let them. Well, I don’t intend to let them anymore. 😁 I won’t go into details here but my remedy involves removing the screen from my office window, and occasionally opening the window itself.

There are two issues with the window… it’s a big, double casement window with a pair of crank mechanisms for opening, and the one that I need to open most often is situated behind my mini-fridge. It’s difficult to get to the opener crank, and even hard to open or close it “gently”. The other issue is that while the window is open my office door needs to be closed so that our house cats won’t wander in and decide to “escape” through the open window. 😾 I suppose the cats could provide some extra starling deternt, but they are not as selective as I am. If it moves, they want to catch it. 🐈

The solution, I hope, is to build and install an automated window opener, one that I can control without getting out of my seat. It would also be nice if I had the same option to open, or at least close, my office door. I have a spare Raspberry Pi Zero W and some related parts so that’s a start. I’ve also just purchased a little High-Torque DC Motor and a RPI-compatible motor controller.

Web Resources

This post captures the resources I’ll use (or used, depending on when you read this) to set my plan in motion. The first step, my OneTab that holds my initial web resources: https://www.one-tab.com/page/0fj_WcQ0TkG256iDV3EE2g.

My Build

Check here for some follow-up soon, I hope.

Launching MacDown from a Terminal

Lately I find that I like to open Markdown documents in MacDown rather than Atom. This is espeically true of things like “README.md” documents that I intend to read, but not edit. This can be done without any special configuration, assuming MacDown is installed and working. To do that use a syntax like this: open -b com.uranusjr.macdown path/to/document.md A command I’ve been using quite often today is: open -b com.uranusjr.macdown ~/GitHub/dg-isle/docs/install/install-local-migrate.

Adding "Remote Atom" to My DigitalOcean Server

Last evening and early this morning I completed the addition of a new (to me) package to Atom on my Mac Mini. The package is Remote Atom and I found the configuration to be a little confusing, but in the end it was worth the work. Use The addition and configuration of this package allows me to open an SSH terminal/session from my Mac Mini to my summitt-dweller-DO-docker droplet and, with Atom open locally on my Mac I can issue a command like

Migrating the Wieting Site in Drupal 8

Migrating the Wieting Site in Drupal 8 Sorry for my extended absence here, I’ve been uber-busy with work, but have also been able to work a little (lots of long nights and weekends) on a long-overdue update of https://Wieting.TamaToledo.com in Drupal 8. It’s true, I have been thinking about moving that site to make it static, almost certainly using Hugo, but I thought before doing so I’d give Drupal 8 one more try.