Paul Sutton

IRC bot development

I have been working on some more projects around IRC chat bots. I decided to try and integrate a Magic 8 ball project so that an IRC bot would give a random response, chosen from a pre- defined set within the code (can be changed) when the bot is sent an instruction in my IRC channel.

This project builds on some of the code covered in my Minecraft Pi bot project. Mostly the base code from the Linux Voice article.

The code is currently being tested in ##zleap on Freenode.

At the moment magic8 can be sent the following commands:-

• !umame – returns output of uname -a
• !uptime – returms system uptime
• !help – displays list of options
• !botexit – bot quits irc channel,
• !magic8 – returns random text
• !ping – returns pong (used to check the bot is working, left in for legacy
• !web – returns my own web address (this website) but can be changed
• !sdtj – returns web address for the South Devon Tech Jam

Notes

uname and uptime are Linux / Unix commands, it is therefore assumed you are running on a GNU / Linux system.

I have created a welcome message from the bot, so when it joins it says hello, also says goodbye if !botexit is sent.

Todo

• Make the code Python 3
• Add more options
• Keep it tidy

Help and Contribute

Feel free to fork the project and make improvements and further customization. Perhaps discuss further on IRC or via social media e.g Mastodon.

Resources

• Freenode
• Github Repository

#python, #development, #irc, #application, #bot, #magic8, #network,#sockets #irc, #project,#github, #chat, #responses, #magic8

Libreoffice 6.4.2

Libreoffice 6.4.2, is now available to download, Please see the latest announcement here This is an update to 6.4 that was announced in a [previous post] post](https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/libreoffice-6-4-released)

#libreoffice, #642, #released, #office, #freesoftware, #freedom, #writer, #calc, #impress, #draw, math, #base

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Owing to the situation with the Coronavirus (COVID-19), the committee of the South Devon TechJam, because we rely on the Paignton Library for venue hosting, regret to have to follow their direction regarding further physical meetings. We have been advised that Torbay Council (who own the Library building) have made the decision to cancel all room bookings for the next 16 weeks.

Further, the libraries will be closing apart from specific limited times (see or ). This is a central decision by Libraries Unlimited's Board of Trustees, Commissioners and Senior Management Team.

Therefore, there will be no further TechJam physical meetings held until further notice. Please stay tuned to our website https://sdtj.org.uk/ and other channels of communication with you to know when we will be able to resume. For any enquiries, please email info@sdtj.org.uk.

• Website
• Freecodecamp

I can still provide some support on the FreeCodeCamp Responsive web design course via the forums.

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Oragono IRCd

Oragono is a modern, experimental IRC server written in Go. It's designed to be simple to setup and use and to provide the majority of features that IRC users expect today.

It includes features such as UTF-8 nicks and channel names, client accounts with SASL, and other assorted IRCv3 support.

• Oragono
• Golang
• FreeCodeCamp 7 Hour Go Course

The project IRC channel can be found on freenode at #oragono

• Freenode
• Webchat

Further to my previous post on Feb 9th. I am now progressing nicely through, the CSS module of the course.

Resources

• FreeCodeCamp

Sign up is free, and there is lots of help on the Forums. You can also use websites such as Repl.it further develop any projects. Code can be copied from FCC to Repl.it for personalised editing. Why have a CatApp when you can have other subjects.

This would also complement your learning.

#course, #freecodecamp, #web, #responsive, #design, #css

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Tom Brady leaves NE Patriots

Big news from the NFL, Tom Brady one of the most successful, all time football players has announced he is leaving the New England Patriots after a long career under Coach Bill Bill Belichick.

Tom Brady has won a total of Six Superbowls since taking over from Drew Bledsoe in 2001.

You can find more info on the NFL website.

#football, #brady, #patriots, #nfl, #news, #qb, #quaterback

Paignton Code Club Update

I have just received an e-mail,m to let me know that Code Club has been cancelled until further notice due to Corona Virus.

We can probably carry on with things online the links below could be useful. If you're working through the Scratch projects you can work through each module in any order. Have fun and just keep experimenting and expanding on what you are learning.

If you do you own projects, then you can also refer to these modules for extra help.

If you are working through Responsive Web Design, feel free to carry on. If you ask on the forums, then someone should be able to help you.

References

• Scratch Website
• Code Club Scratch Projects
• FreeCodeCamp

Console / terminal File viewer

One of the nice things about forums, IRC etc, is you get to find out about all sorts of software that is really useful. Sometimes this just seems to address fit what you want.

One such example is a program called view

manpage description is:-

mcview – Internal file viewer of GNU Midnight Commander.

You can use view to view pdf files, or rather the text content within, which is pretty good, very useful if compiling $\LaTeX$ with pdflatexfor example.

You can also use view on a png graphics file, however this just displays information about the file, for example resolution. Again useful from the terminal / console at least.

Resources

• Midnight Commander
• Other file viewers

#console, #file,#view,#pdf,#linux

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Debian Installer Bullseye Alpha 2 release

I am sharing this, as it appeared in the e-mail to :

debian-boot@lists.debian.org and debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org

mailing lists.

Therefore, please refer to those lists for information / follow up. Hopefully this helps spread the word.

—

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the second alpha release of the installer for Debian 11 “Bullseye”.

Improvements in this release ============================

• anna:
  • Turn warning regarding missing kernel modules into a more descriptive error (#749991, #367515).
• clock-setup:
  • Rephrase template about the benefit of a correctly set up clock.
• espeakup:
  • Do not use sleep with subsecond durations.
  • Print the number of detected cards.
• debian-installer:
  • Make write-built-using more robust.
  • Bump Linux kernel ABI to 5.4.0-4.
• glibc:
  • Make libc-udeb depends on libcrypt1-udeb (#941853).
• grub-installer:
  • Change template, to clarify definition of the just installed Debian system.
• netcfg:
  • Improve templates (especially regarding malformed IP addresses).
• pkgsel:
  • Ensure tasksel is installed, regardless of its priority.
  • Add preseedable pkgsel/run_tasksel debconf template, making it possible (by setting it to false) to skip tasksel entirely (installation and prompt), while still benefiting from other pkgsel features.
• preseed:
  • Update auto-install/defaultroot, replacing buster with bullseye.
• rootskel:
  • Re-order script to make sure users are set up.
  • Enable high-contrast theme when installation was made with the dark theme.
  • Enable compiz ezoom features for accessibility.
  • Specify fs_spec field in fstab-linux mount points. Some tools parse /proc/mounts and try to match on the spec field to find where sysfs is mounted (ie. dasdfmt on s390x). This makes the installer environment look more similar to installed systems.
  • Tweak how multiple consoles are used. If preseeding is detected, do not run on multiple consoles in parallel as that causes race conditions and weird behaviour. Instead, just run on the “preferred” console (#940028, #932416).
• systemd:
  • Use 73-usb-net-by-mac.link in udev-udeb (See also: #946196).
• user-setup:
  • Add input, kvm, and render to reserved-usernames; udev.postinst adds these as system groups.

Hardware support changes ========================

• debian-installer:
  • Switch from vmlinux to vmlinuz for mips* except on Octeon.
  • Update Firefly-RK3288 image for new u-boot version.
• flash-kernel:
  • Add support for bootspec entries, bootable by barebox (#931953).
  • Fix a corner case that makes flash-kernel fail silently (#932231).
  • Make initrd optional for machines with Boot-Multi-Path (#869073).
  • Add support for Librem 5 devkit (#927700).
  • Add support for OLPC XO-1.75 laptops.

Localization status ===================

• 76 languages are supported in this release.
• Full translation for 12 of them.

Known bugs in this release ==========================

• There seems to be no known major bug as of yet.

See the errata[2] for details and a full list of known issues.

Feedback for this release =========================

We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so please try it. Installation images, and everything else you will need are available at our web site[3].

Thanks ======

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this release.

1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
3. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

Cheers, — Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) https://debamax.com/ D-I release manager — Release team member — Freelance Consultant