Category Archives: Personal Computing

Personal Computing, Uncategorized

Alternative Twitter Apps

With the advent of iPadOS and development work at Twitter, Inc. the iPad Twitter app has become unstable. As of iPadOS 13.1, multiple users are seeing the following problems.

  • Each time the app is updated, view mode switches from the most recent to “Home” view. Most users prefer the timeline view.
  • In both home and timeline views, the app interrupts what you are doing to refresh the view.
  • The app segfaults at random
  • The app hangs in the tweet editor
  • The app segfaults in the tweet editor

In this article, we’ll look at an alternative Twitter app. There are two well regarded apps, Twitteriffic and Tweetbot having similar user interfaces and none of the rude behaviors mentioned above.

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Audio, Music, Personal Computing

Schiit Pi?

Those of you who saw the John Darko interview of Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffat filmed at the 2018 RMAF know that both have a passion for Schitty puns. During this interview, Mike teased a “Schiit Pi” concept. Mike’s idea was to embed an ARM processor in products to pick up additional digital signal processing tasks beyond the abilities of the Burr-Brown parts he had been using.

Jason is adamant that Schiit will not become a “software company”, that is offer IOS and Android apps or make devices having a significant user interface say like Roon Controller or Volumio remote. The ongoing maintenance of these products is simply too costly for the Schiit minimalist value first design esthetic.

A Minimalist Streaming Player

So can we make a minimalist streamer using a hatless Raspberry Pi? If we did, how would it sound? This product is as basic as a Roon Player can get. It turns out to be a very good one. Will Jason put it in the catalog? Probably not. Volumio got there first with more software integrated.

Those not wanting to tinker with hardware and software will find Volumio Primo a good alternative that provides a SBC and DAC supporting AirPlay, Rune, Roon, Spotify, and others but excludes the headphone amplifier. John Darko’s review is excellent and he likes the sound of Primo and the value offered. Primo is comparable, maybe not quite as sweet as the Allo Digi+ Signature. However, the ALLO devices requires you to bring your own DAC.

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Personal Computing, Web hacking

A house call goes wrong

While looking after his church’s Ubiquity UniFi network plant, the Moocher scrapes his knuckles. A simple update and put guest policies on the various guest wireless networks.

A year ago a local managed network services contractor configured our USG, switches, and access points. The church played the role of contractor subbing some of the wiring, doing some ourselves, and hiring a network installer to dress out the rack and install the service outlet plates. A second contractor configured the church purchased network core.

A year later, we discover that one of our contractors had left the guest WiFi networks open to the main LAN from whence the controller could be configured. So change that right? Yes, but not from the WiFi. All hell broke loose. The hot wash is after the break.

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Personal Computing

Installing Unifi In-Wall Access points

The Retired Moocher decided to make the move to all Ubiquity UniFi home networking equipment. The moocher’s home network is typical of that found in a residence or small business. We have a wired Ethernet network that serves all of the high bandwidth stuff plus a WiFi network that serves the Moocher’s iThings, guests, and Internet of Things. A Netgear Orbi had been carrying this traffic with the occasional mysterious fade. Desiring more visibility into the network’s behavior, the Moocher decided to retire the Orbis and install UniFi In-Wall HD and AC access points. The Moocher describes his deployment.

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Personal Computing, Technology, Web hacking

Moving to Unifi USG Router

For the longest time, Apple Airport Extreme secured the Dismal Manor networks. This began back in 2002 when, out of curiosity, the Head Moocher bought an Air Port Express to add WiFi in the early days. The Moocher had noticed that firmware updates kept showing up for the Airport products so concluded, rightly, that Apple was making an effort to keep these products up to date and secure. When Apple discontinued the Airport product line, it was time to move on. But to what?

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Audio, Personal Computing

Allo Digione gets a Face

John Darko of Darko.Audio fame asked what you hide your Raspberry Pi based audio player behind. That got me thinking. Give it a face like a Bryston Audio BDP-Pi player. Could that be done?

John was a fan of the RoPieee Linux plus Roon Bridge distribution so I gave RoPieee a try. In reading the RoPieee installation notes, I noticed that it supported the Raspberry Pi 7 inch touchscreen display. Having one lying around, I decided to add it to the basic Signature One player.

As always with DIY, some assembly is required and it is not all in the fine manual. I was using my display with an Allo DigiOne Signature HAT assembly. This HAT blocks access to the GPIO power pins. Oops — what’s the work around. Keep reading after the break.

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Audio, Personal Computing

MacOS Software Defined Radio with GQRX and RTL-SDR

Radio, like most else, has gone digital. In the early days of digital signal processing, pioneers realized that many modulation and demodulation techniques could be performed by digital computation.

As computers became cheaper and faster and integrated circuits became cheaper and faster, it was inevitable that the guts of radio receivers and transmitters would be mostly digital and that computers would do much of what went on inside new radios.

This post will describe the initial exploration of GQRX and RTL-SDR here at Dismal Manor. Most of what is already written on the Internet neglects to mention a couple of details the Moocher learned the hard way. Find out what these are after the break.

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Audio, Music, Personal Computing

Home Networks for Streaming Audio

I’ve not written on audio and networking in a while but over the holiday I read Jason Stoddard’s Schiit Happens about his return to the high fidelity equipment industry as co-founder of Schiit, a maker of personal audio and value oriented high end audio. I found the book after I had ordered my Schiit Gungnir Multi-bit DAC. Over the break I had also watched a video in which Mike and Jason (the founders) talked about how Schiit came to be and this, that, and the other thing. They are toying with the notion of offering a new product which Mike kept calling Schiit Pi. This got me thinking I should write about my streaming environment again as I had improved it significantly in 2018.

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Personal Computing, Technology

UniFi Updates

A new switch, cloud key, and updated network video recorder joined the Dismal Manor UniFi stable this October. The Moocher checked firmware to discover that updating the core POE switch to the latest firmware required updating UniFi Controller. At that time, UniFi controller ran in a FreeNAS jail. So, the cheap intrepid Moocher tried to update UniFi controller in the jail. He quickly discovered he was in dependency hell. Find out how he got out after the jump.

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